Today’s posting challenge is about the name of this blog–what, why, and where it comes from.
This is hardly mysterious. My last name is Grimm, and I set up this blog (originally) to be my writing blog. You do the math.
So instead I will talk about the name of my first blog, "Screaming in the Dark." I made that blog back in the 90's, back when the internet was so new it barely had graphics and the idea of sharing information was just as new. Back when I was pretty new, too, and trying desperately to navigate a life I was ill prepared for while dodging the demons that haunted my every step.
Anyone who knows me knows my life was never a picnic. Abuse, neglect, mental programs, and a lot of anger haunted my childhood. By the time I was seventeen my mother had had enough of me and threw me out of the house. By the time I was in my early 20′s I was a wreck. I barely knew how to make friends, I worked shit jobs for too little pay–so little that even holding down two or three could not pay my meager bills–and every day seemed just a little bit darker than the last.
Some good things happened, such as me discovering a place called Ravensguild. There I made my first lifelong friends, embraced a spiritual path I was finally happy with, and discovered that everything I said, felt, and thought was not wrong or stupid or immature. I was, for the first time, respected, and it was a revelation. It wasn’t enough to cure all that ailed me, but it went a long way to making me the person I am today.
But while it made my mental life easier, it did nothing for my physical one, and could only help ameliorate the worst of my lingering emotional effects. Bluntly put, they kept me sane, but they couldn’t make me a functioning human. I felt like I was drowning, physically and emotionally, that the light was going out of the world. Every day, every breath was a struggle, and I was ill equipped to deal with it.
But a friend in the Guild noticed. He only went by Wraith; it was all I ever knew him as, even though I have long since learned the names of most of the others. He didn’t speak often of his past, and what little I learned showed his to be far darker than mine. We spoke often. I told him what was going on with me, and he told me it was okay. It was okay to be in darkness. It was okay to drown.
See, I felt I was failing at life. I often still do. But I wasn’t the failure. In fact, nothing was wrong with me at all. Everything I was was a normal response to a fucked up existence. I was, in fact, a machine of survival, bred under harsh conditions to stand up to anything. What seemed broken was merely me breaking into a new world, a world where I no longer had those conditions to endure. I had to learn all new skills, and do it without a therapeutic ear, parental guidance, or really, any help at all. I was in the deep end–sink or swim–and I was going under.
I saw this world with a stranger’s eyes, and I saw more in it than those whom it had treated gently as children. I saw the hypocrisy, the double-speak, the lies. I saw it when politicians’ swindles made lives harder and closed doors. I noticed when people were subtly rude about my value, implying I had none because I was poor. I understood as my friends could not how and why the deck was stacked against me. And I ranted about the unfairness of it, even though every rant fell on deaf ears. People who hadn’t been there didn’t believe it, people who had and survived refused to think I could be different than them while those who failed also thought they were fully to blame for their failure. The first lesson I learned as an adult in this country that there was no mercy for people like me, and that I was more disposable than a week old McDonald’s wrapper.
I was mentally broken and scarred, severely PTSD, completely alone in the world without any familial support, I had no savings, and every goal I reached towards I had to achieve completely alone. Before you say it’s easy, imagine college without loans or grants, imagine your parents never washing your clothes, no friends to lend you money or take you out, no reward for hard work but more hard work. I was in a race with the rest of the world, but someone had moved my starting line ten miles back, broken both my legs, then demanded I catch up. Then, when I found myself floundering and begged for help, they told me my failure was my fault.
It was a hard coming-of-age, an awful one, and at the time I was unable to sort all the lies from the truth; even the truths I suspected I was reluctant to give public voice to. No one agreed (oddly enough, almost 15 years later they do but it took the collapse of an economy), and most told me I was full of it. So instead I whispered it to Wraith in private.
The pain I felt, the betrayal of my country, the double standard of outward politeness and subtle discrimination, the ghosts of my past trying to devour me, my feeling of culture shock and betrayal in my own home, a stranger in a familiar land, all the unnecessary trials I had to endure, and my fury at being thrown to the wolves…he called it “screaming in the dark.” He’d been there, talking into the blackness, into people’s apathy and their unwillingness to listen or learn. He’d raged against the world, a well founded rage, and been ignored, forgotten, dismissed. Disposed of. He’d screamed defiance against his own demons as threatened his very being, and he lived in that darkness still. We both did.
He taught me the darkness is okay. The fury, the pain, all of it is as right to feel and embrace as joy or love. Getting rid of the emotions only numbs you, but it doesn’t make the source of the problem go away. Injustice will exist, always, but the brave don’t look away. The truly brave don’t fear the dark.
And he taught me that I wasn’t alone.
I remember the relief I felt. I was depressed, and that was okay. I wasn’t “broken,” I didn’t need to “cheer up” or “get over it” or “focus on the positive.” I could rest, stop struggling all the time to live up to those impossible expectations, nurse my wounds and just let them heal. All those things other people demanded of me, that was their wants, their needs, their desires, not mine. And I had no obligation to fill them.
Wraith taught me there is positive strength in pain, in sorrow, in being true to yourself and honoring your needs, even those most people would say are negative ones.
I named my first blog “Screaming in the Dark,” and that was what I did. I was young, there was an awful lot of whining done. But I said many true things as well, and I found a forum in which people would listen. And through all of them, I made my way out of the dark.
That time in my life is over, even if I feel the darkness swimming about my feet again, piranhas set on devouring me. I’m not yet certain the blog title still fits, and I am certainly fearful that I have no more wisdom or insight, but that my best years for both are behind me. I am pretty certain no one would listen, not this time, and I find myself blaming myself for my failures and cowering once again from the dark. It’s a scary damned place.
But for the moment, I’m trying it again, just to see if it’s right, just to see if it fits. Just to see where it goes. I’m walking down old roads in search of new paths, things I missed the first time around, and seeking to pick up strengths I once had but have since let fall behind me. And I am completely noncommittal. “We’ll see” is all the credence I give it.
But if I get really lucky, maybe I’ll find myself there once again.
And if I get really, really, really lucky, maybe I’ll find the ghost of a lost friend.
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