Source: This image is one of my coloured pencil drawings.
While still asleep, the darkness of lack rises in me. It rouses me from my bed, shaming me with its predictions of loneliness and separateness. It counts the ways I am not loved. It points out evidence and reviews it side by side on memory’s screen. I grow rigid against its insistences but in resisting its advances, my non-acceptance strengthens its gloom.

Early in its onslaught, remembering the collective wisdom of accepting its presence by not fighting the pain - strikes me as insane. How can I choose to be intimate with a pain that was created in hell?

Nevertheless as the sages predict, my resistance, an effect of trying to force what-is into what I need, crystallizes into shards. The jagged edges pierce me, tearing my heart. Dreams of love-tokens drop impotently at my feet and reality’s confirmation pushes me further into the darkness. It taunts, implicating me as the cause. I am not lovable. I am not entertaining or even useful.

The sting is tortuous but at the crossroads of no options, I accept the truth of it.

The darkness warns my worth is questionable and my ego, my gauge of self-importance screams in terror demanding release from this outrageous truth!

“Yes, dearest ego, in the arena of what is valuable and important, your protégé truly is an ugly duckling. There can be no denying this truth. There is no salvation in the idea that she may be a swan. She is an ugly duckling doubtly beneficial to others. The darkness has been adept at proving this. She is unpopular.

You seem unable to reconcile this and continue to wish for her elevated value. It is difficult, I understand, to resolve this paradox. If others do not value validating her, what is the point of her existence? In the game of social competing, she has won complete failure. Protesting that you were assigned such a lowly being, you list the ways she needs to be improved. It is a long and detailed list, after all, you have her best interest in mind.

However dearest ego, are you not supposed to be her supporter? Why are you not reminding her the darkness of lack is temporary? Instead you list and point to her inadequacies? Wouldn’t focusing on her substance protect her better and since you are proclaimed as her protector, is she not a beloved? Something precious to protect?

Perhaps it is time she learnt this about you. You are fear, aren’t you, the helpmate this world reveres?

Without her permission, she emerged into this reality and you entered her to protect her. An ancestral legacy that was meant to keep her safe. But you have turned on her, haven’t you?

In your arrogance to know best, you have become her enemy. You are the darkness who plagues her well-being. In her need, she cried out, and I heard her. You now need to step aside and learn a better way of caring for her.

Who am I, you ask?

I am the love with which she was born.”