Where the Dark Leaked Out

Sparkle, wonder, magic, and fantasy worlds exploding with vibrant colors were the eclipse to her sorrow. Pretending she was good at it, you’d never see anyone put on such a well-executed facade, and the imagination that ignited when she closed her eyes made her money. She could fill the darkness with color as if scribbling over black with a rainbow could ever mask the night. She was an author of magic, and wrote all the things into books that she was not equipped with, and she was good at it.

Published author well known for igniting childlike awe in readers. Well known for the smile, the writing, and the self-publishing route that has gone successfully. Creatures walked the lands she built with fluidity and ease, characters so animated that readers could reach out and try to touch them. Storylines forged by magic, but like magic, she, the writer, was also make-believe. She dipped her toes into the quicksand of sorrow, defeat, and trauma, but the World was not as responsive to darkness as she had hoped. Pivot, what she’s good at, and twisted the dark into light. Somewhere locked away in what she thought to be a safe place lay her previous work, the work of the dark.

An evening filled with storms and thunder, her fingers tap dance along the keyboard, spinning a new chapter for an upcoming release. She crouches over the computer like a cat and ponders how her spine hasn’t permanently frozen in this Quasimodo position. She taps her fingers against her mouth, stuck on the following line to write, she is too consumed by an appointment from earlier today. Her doctor shared that the new medications she had started were no longer effective and needed to be changed, again. She is aggravated and can’t seem to find the twist. The twist into a creative and lack of a sparkling objective filled her with sadness and rage, as she yearned to write above rivers of lava, not fairies or magic. She sits up straight, cocks her neck from shoulder to shoulder, searching for the darkness. With a click and a password, she opens a document she had laid to rest years ago. She begins to write.

The previous writing is messy and chaotic. Now, as she reviews it under the lens of a self-published author, she still aches for it to be completed. Her fingers write with fever and fury. New worlds, even of darkness, cannot be created from this. No new characters, no demons or gargoyles, and magic doesn’t exist where she is writing, because she isn’t writing fiction; she writes what is real. There was no iconic battle scene between her previous characters, written in fantasy, fighting the good and away from the darkness. The stories she wrote didn’t exist in the real world. There was no magic.

Empty. The words are now on the screen, illuminating in front of her and no longer inside her. The angst settles, the rage quiets, and the pain rests for the night. She has some relief and promises herself she will pick up the magic in the morning. As she clicks “save,” she just begins to close the laptop lid, but then she sees “send.” She did not click save but rather send. She sent the excerpt she wrote, encapsulated in pain, to all her readers. The mask was off, the sparkle nowhere to be found, not even flecks of glitter could reflect off this piece, and she shared it with the world that knew her as a crafter of magic.

Here we are again, nothing working, and doctors are playing with my meds as if they were a game of ping pong. If only I could bury the feeling of frustration somewhere deeper, because I should know better, given the years and decades of experience. Where do we go now, I ask as if I don’t know the answer. We will continue roulette, and I am reminded of being a child stuck on this merry-go-round. What happens at the end of this experiment? What happens when there are no other remedies to try? I assume I will wither away into nothingness. This monster used to eat me alive, but now it stops at the cusp of the end. I never reach the end, I only get the point of dissolution, but steadily. Steady dissolvement only to pause at moments so that I can remain conscious, aware, and paused. This monster has no hero, no spell or witchcraft to calm its appetite, and so I stay powerless outside of the stories I paint, because the same fingertips that write novels also tell lies. I am the monster.

She looks away from the nightmare she is now living because incessant dinging pulls her eyes from the short story. Chimes play repetitively for new comments and emails coming in. She looks away in agony, knowing that people have read this excerpt; they’ve read words that were only to exist in her bones, and she aches from the humiliation. What will she do now? Now they will know that her light doesn’t come from cherished moments, storytelling in her youth, and it doesn’t come from a joyful place; instead, she is the darkness and portrays light in her stories. How will her readers understand? Beads of sweat form against her brow as her heart pumps louder to the thought of no longer being a writer, for people thinking of her as a fraud, but they didn’t want to see the dark, and she had to bury it. She thinks of sending a follow-up email to explain and apologize. She thinks about lying, that she could share it was a work in progress, a long time ago, not meant for the public, and it would only be a bite-sized lie because tonight’s writing was new, but the overall story had been shoved away for no one ever to read. She continues her torment and reads.

When I was young, doctors played the same game on repeat as if each time they could obtain a higher score. The mysterious little girl, whatever will we do with her, they all must have thought. Yet, here I still am, standing, standing but standing, and catching the ride that goes round and round but never lets me off. In my ignorance, I thought that 20 years later, doctors would have more knowledge, more research, and even a sliver of answers, but still, there is nothing. I do not have answers for why my body hates itself so much that it devours my muscles, causes pain to awaken from, and leaves my mind debilitated. I write fictional characters as if what I write somehow produces truth, as if slaying demons inside the walls of books conquers them within my bloodstream. I remain hopeful that another new medication will make me well. I still imagine the swallowing of pills the same as I did as a child, that as they disintegrate inside my stomach and flicker through my walls, the monster will become weaker. I imagine that rather than growing to ten times my size like a magical bean stalk, I begin to cower inwards, that the beast that roars and wreaks havoc against me is silenced. I never lose hope that maybe this time and this pill works, but as I write and exert my best attempt to create new characters, I am left embarrassed. I tuck hope away like a middle school-aged girl hiding a tampon because I can’t let anyone close to me know I have it. I’ve been in battle so long that the sympathy from others is like kryptonite. Once more, I will be brave, I will put on my best face, stand up, write the stories people want to read, and tuck the monster away. I will bury the sadness in my bones because they are the only thing the beast has yet to take from me.

The ding persists, and she stops reading the excerpt. She thinks to call a friend or a loved one, but it’s 3am, and what was she to say? Lightning crashed outside, and she decides to hover the laptop mouse over the dozens of messages she has received. Should she even open them? She reflects on how many times in her life she has walked away from something due to fear, and can’t recall a single time. She makes the decision to be brave; this was her mistake, her undoing, and her ending in the literary world. She never gets an ending in her own thriller of a life.

Click. Open. Messages sprawl out and cast light onto her face. She begins to cry at the first message, which reads, “I don’t know what book this will be a part of, but it’s great so far and different.” Others read just like it. Could her writing shift? Could she take up space on both sides? Could she write a world she wished for, spun in magic, and also display the harsh truth of reality?

She was going to try. An accident of spilling darkness into fresh air could lighten her whole world.