The Glaring Dawn

Today, my eyes are dull, my senses numb. I feel distant, as though nothing in the world can hurt me, yet everything inside me screams of pain. I imagine my own death a hundred ways, often by my own hand. It’s horror, shame, and terror all wrapped up in a miasma of misery, dragging me down to depths unknown. It’s as close to Hell as I ever hope to get, yet it is not without hope. I dwell in utter darkness, but in the back of my mind, an inkling or a memory or even a dream of a single candle flame flickers amidst the nightmare.

It wasn’t always like this. At first, it was melancholy, aimlessness, which turned to hollowness. At first, all I knew was nothing sounded interesting anymore, like my motivation had withered. Then, it became an active threat, driving me toward cliff sides and ocean depths and sharp objects. I have imagined dying more times than I can count. I have seen my own blood spill, and I have felt my skin blister time and time and time again. One time, I swallowed tablespoons of baking soda trying to vomit up the pills I had just ingested. It didn’t work; the pills remained in my stomach to be flushed out by liters of fluids the next day. I didn’t know about the fluids then; I just laid down to sleep, not knowing if I’d wake up.

Today, I like to think the worst is behind me, but I don’t know. What does “worst” mean? If it involves self-harm and suicide attempts, then I am thankful to need both hands to count the years since such have plagued me. I like to think the despondency has lessened, the pressure has lifted, and the pain has alleviated over the years, even as it ebbs and flows, but I’m not certain. Maybe I just have more tethering me to reality and hope than I had before. Some might call it coping mechanisms, some count it as faith, but either way, my response to my feelings has changed. Yet have the feelings changed?

I can’t say. All I know is this is Hell-ish, and placing one foot in front of the other seems more than I can bear. I refuse to think about the next step, because if I do, it will terrorize me with a thousand ways it can go wrong. I can’t look forward.

Neither can I look behind. Either I see similar times of pain and fear, which continue to grind down my spirit, or I see times of happiness that appear so distant and infuriating I want to strangle them with the despair that’s strangling me.

But to dwell in the present, that is a formidable torment. I desire to be anywhere but the present at times like this. So where do I look? I want to close my eyes—in sleep, in death, it doesn’t matter to me. Oh, how I want to close my eyes. The deepening darkness makes me wonder if I haven’t already. Yet then, there’s the searing light, the glaring dawn, that harrowing brightness from which, at first, I want to hide. I am naked before it, like Adam and Eve in the Garden, and I have no fig leaves or lies with which to clothe myself, only my shame and anguish. I am ugly and broken—I have shed blood, I have branded myself with the mark of my hopelessness. I have scars, O Light of lights. How can you look upon me? I am a creature of the dark; I dwell in secrecy and humiliation. I live in sinfulness every day of my life. O glaring Brightness, leave me before I am consumed by Your perfection, before I am destroyed in my iniquity by Your holiness. Never have I understood fear until now. I tremble in it, and I want to turn away, but I cannot, cannot, close my eyes somehow.

Now we have this treasure in clay jars, so that this extraordinary power may be from God and not from us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; we are perplexed but not in despair; we are persecuted but not abandoned; we are struck down but not destroyed. We always carry the death of Jesus in our body, so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our body. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’s sake, so that Jesus’s life may also be displayed in our mortal flesh. (1 Corinthians 4:7-11 CSB)

I am a jar of clay, so easily shattered, and I am given over to death daily. Death stares me down so often, I would know those darkened eyes of despair anywhere. But God deigns to place His extraordinary power in me so that every time death comes to crush me, I am only afflicted. Every time despair would overwhelm me, I shout to the heavens in perplexity instead. I am pursued and persecuted by my own mind each day, yet I am not abandoned to my twisted thinking, and though I fall, I remain. I carry death in me—O how I carry death in me—but life is greater. Jesus is displayed in me, His life in my mortal flesh.

So I will not close my eyes. The light might be as blinding as the darkness at times, but it is good. I might not understand the shadows or the brightness that casts them, but I can place my hope in the Sun of righteousness. And one day, someday, the darkness will flee and I will feel the healing power of the Light, and I will dwell in the eternal Day.