Even in Darkness

The night has fallen. Light knows no name here, except for the littlest beings shining through gloom, lighting the way. Some call them fireflies, some call them lightning bugs, but they are one in the same, magic. Stories are as if the creator captured moments in a jar, like fireflies, and watched them turn darkness into light. There’s a feeling you get watching them light up that feels magical. That’s the meaning of a story. Stories are so many things, but mostly, they are some sort of sorcery. They take you and transport you to places unseen or places we have been. We can relive moments of our lives and feel everything we felt in that tiny frame of existence. Though some feel too dark to be able to find the magic that lights up. Some feel heavy, and unable to relive. I have some of those that have felt like complete blackness. Even, through those, I have still captured those fireflies and found a light. This one, broke me. And then, it healed me.

It began like this..

It was cold. That’s the first thing that comes to mind when I think back to that day. Not just chilly — it was the kind of cold that seeps into your bones and makes everything feel still. It was only October, but it felt like December. The air was too quiet, almost like a warning. The calm before a storm I didn’t know was coming.

Looking back, there were signs. Signs that he wasn’t being honest about things. Signs that he was trying to be someone he simply wasn’t. But I chose not to see them. He was my boyfriend, the father of my child, the person I trusted to keep our world safe. And you never think the bad things will happen to you — you think you’re the exception. I thought I was. I was wrong. I met him two years before that day, through a mutual friend. He was mysterious, complicated, magnetic. I was drawn to him despite knowing there were pieces of him that he kept hidden. Eventually, he told me he was in recovery and had been clean for a long time. He asked me not to see him differently, and I honestly didn’t. We loved each other, and I believed that was enough. When I found out I was pregnant, he moved into my parents’ house so we could prepare for the baby. Nine long months later, our daughter was born, and everything felt right. We were a family. 

But four months after her birth, little things started to go missing — my mother’s jewelry, my sister’s ring. We told ourselves maybe someone had broken in. My father even changed all the locks and filed a police report. Deep down, I refused to believe it could have been him. Then came the Wednesday that shattered everything. The detectives called us to the station, just to “ask a few questions.” We all went, except for him — he was at work. First they spoke to my parents, then they asked for me. Just me. The moment I stepped into that small room, I knew something was wrong. My mother’s blank stare told me she’d been crying. My father couldn’t even look at me. My whole body shook as I sat down. The detectives laid out pictures of jewelry on the table and asked if I recognized any of it. I told them most of it belonged to my mother. Then came the question I wasn’t ready for: “Do you know where these pictures came from?” I said no. And then they flipped the papers over — revealing my boyfriend’s license.

“It was your boyfriend,” they said. “He stole the jewelry and sold it for money.”

Everything after that went quiet. Their mouths moved, but I couldn’t hear them. My dreams, my plans, my safe little world — gone in a single moment. When I got home, my family tore through our room, throwing his things into bags. They found needles. Drugs. Proof. With every discovery, my heart broke a little more. I felt shame like I’d never known before — shame for bringing him into our lives, for trusting him, for being blind. We threw his bags out on the porch and waited. When he came back, he didn’t understand at first. Then he started banging on the door — over and over, until it felt like gunshots going off in my chest. He cried. He begged. He screamed that it wasn’t him. I wanted to scream back, to demand answers, to hurt him with my words the way he had hurt me. But I couldn’t speak. I placed my back against the basement door, unconsolable, and fell to floor wishing it all away. While, our baby girl, slept in her crib, not knowing the scars inflicted on her.

It was cold. That’s what I have held onto for so many years — the bitter October air, the stillness of the world outside. Because if I remembered the cold, I didn’t have to feel the shame, the anger, or the heartbreak that lived in me for years.

Though, today, I am free of the pain that captured me. It took many years, and some deep diving into therapy, but I freed myself from carrying the weight of that scarlet letter. It always felt engraved on my very soul. I imagined it would say, “tainted by her past, unworthy of happiness.” Messed up, I know. But, it is what you tell yourself after stuff like that happens. You simply can’t move on without it following you everywhere like a stalker. For years, I wore it with such shame, yet it became an armor, pretending to keep everything away. When in reality, the only thing that tried to get to me was happiness. It couldn’t reach me for many years, though in small moments I felt its’ presence.

It wasn’t until I went through the worst part of my life, and found my way back to myself, that I fully forgave the boy in my story. It wasn’t until I could feel the being of the word empty. Once I felt that, I knew the pain he faced, the sadness that laid waiting for him every time the drugs wore off. There were battles he faced that I couldn’t begin to understand back then, but I do now. It does not make what he did OK, trust me I know that, but I have forgiven him for the pain he caused me. Forgiveness did not make it OK, forgiveness set me free of the pain I carried. I understood, for the first time, what darkness was made of. Though my darkness was different, it was still shades of shadows that are meant to break you.

Some stories take you and shape you. Others will completely shatter you and leave you in pieces, so broken that it feels unimaginable to be whole. Though, this specific one did both. I am who I am because of this little scarlet letter that I have learned to accept. It still sits there. It just reads a different way. For, now it reads, “grown from her past, open and worthy of happiness.”

Take what you will of the stories that carved their place within me. They have shown me who I am, and who I am meant to be. Your own will do the same. So, tell your stories. Let them teach. Let them make you. But, never forget YOU are the author, your story is your own, and you hold the pen.

The past can feel like a scarlet letter, so big that you think that everyone sees it from a mile away. But, it doesn’t have to be like that. It can read what you want it to read. Let it read good, for, you are worthy of that. You are worthy of happiness. 

Even in darkness, fireflies light up the night.