ANOTHER DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL by Lynn Marie Ramjass

 

"When you come to the edge of all the light you have, and step into the darkness of the unknowing believe that one of the two will happen to you. Either you'll find something solid to stand on or you'll be taught to fly." Richard Bach

I had originally written Another Dark Night of the Soul in November 2008, almost a year following the death of my mother. It was originally posted on my Living With Bipolar Disorder public page and private group on Facebook. 

I also posted it on an old blog Thanks For Tomorrow that my friend and partner of my mental health groups, Tracey Lynn Barfield set up before her death on January 10, 2014. She was more proficient in computer related matters then I was.

I hadn't written in the blog much since her passing because it was like going home to an empty house.  

Therefore, I decided to start my own personal blog this year May 2021 after six years of silence. I am not fully certain the mechanics of it all. 

ANOTHER DARK NIGHT OF THE SOUL                                        

"Walking with a friend in the dark, is better than walking alone in the light." Helen Keller

November 2008

By Lynn Marie Ramjass

I find that I have descended into yet another ‘dark night of the soul’ in which there is no solace, only suffering, sorrow, and silence. I have sat within that silence and searched the depth and breadth of my mind, heart, and soul. Sadness, grief, anger, remorse, confusion, despair, loneliness and isolation, old familiar feelings, like long departed friends, gradually take positions on the floor of my psyche. I cannot evade them nor deny their existence. I cannot run though I want to. Instead, I acknowledge them, I enter that darkness and respect that they have come for a reason.

I have sat with them as the days have turned to weeks without words of expression, until I finally ask, to none in particular, the reason why they are here and what it is that I have to learn. I suspect a profound change in my person and in the process of becoming the woman whom I am meant to be. I cannot help feeling both the loss and the presence of my mother and my Nanny simultaneously.

I feel as though I were again, within the belly of the whale, my own private prison, where there is no light, only darkness and shadows. I must face the void and work my way through it. Though I cannot know with absolute certainty how long this will take.

It has been months since these intensely painful and dark emotions have overwhelmed me. The mute silence is both deafening and maddening. Though I pray frequently and fervently, the dark night remains. I cannot suppress this experience or deny these feelings, for to do so, would surely plummet me into madness and perpetual despair once again. And I cannot live like that, not anymore.

Though presently, it feels as though God Himself has turned his back. The words resound through the vast expanse of the universe and my pleas go unheard and my prayers remain unanswered. I trust that a higher power shall make both their presence and their will known to me in their own good time.

I have been reading quite a bit. I have literally hundreds of books in my personal library. While reading Oscar Wilde’s DE PROFUNDIS, I was particularly taken with the following passage:

“Society, as we have constituted it, will have no place for me, has none to offer; but Nature, whose sweet rains fall on unjust and just alike, will have clefts in the rocks where I may hide, and secret valleys in whose silence I may weep undisturbed. She will hang the night with stars so that I may walk abroad in the darkness without stumbling and send the wind over my footprints so that none may track my hurt; she will cleanse me in great waters, and with bitter herbs make me whole.”

I have always found solace in nature, in books and in prayer. Strange how my full name means “gentle  waters, waterfalls, refreshing pool” and my maiden name "brilliant hostage." I confess at times I feel as though I were just that and held against my will when darkness envelopes me. Oh how I can so readily relate to that passage. There are, as you know, hurts that only God or some higher power may touch. There are wounds that given sufficient time may heal, but there are others that never fully heal.

I have faced significant losses in my life, and no one is immune to sorrow. I have learned as Ernest Hemingway wrote “I am strong in the broken places” and survived things I previously thought would utterly defeat me or spiral me into lunacy and darkness indefinitely. But these experiences have only served to make me a stronger, more compassionate, tolerant, and understanding human being.

There are no words to heal the broken hearted. The pain may dull over time, but it never completely disappears. This sorrow consumed me when I lost my best friend, my grandmother and finally my mother. The three most influential women in my life. Words cannot fully express what torture mom went through, or the sense of relief that I felt when she died as she was in so much pain. Words cannot fully convey my suffering with her loss and in being the only child unable to be with her when she took her last breath on December 17, 2007.

I stand on the shoulders of some strong, kind, generous, empathetic, compassionate, and loving women. Women who strengthened, encouraged, and inspired me. I feel the presence of my departed ancestors and close female friends who either died, or parted company for other reasons that they were unable to continue the journey with me. They walk with me daily for I carry them in my heart! 

There is comfort in this knowledge. In every remembrance of them. I've learned to feel the full weight of my sorrow, sadness, disappointment. Allow myself sufficient time to grieve. And eventually let it go. I'll pick myself up and move on. 

Lynn Marie Ramjass