Lean into the Light

We can pull the blanket over our heads or climb out of bed to face the dark.

I don’t know how Stephen King does it. I’ve visited The Overlook Hotel aka The Stanley, which was his inspiration for The Shining, which is the only Stephen King movie I can handle.

The Stanley does this great tour that’s part history / part pop culture enigma that talks about the events surrounding his stay at the hotel as you tour. The link between real events during that stay and the haunting stories in his book played a big factor in my enjoyment of the tour. But I wouldn’t want to stay there, because evil exists.

I’ve read enough of his work to know that King understands evil. How he rolls around in the dark, how he plays with the demons, how he writes book-after-horrific-book is beyond me.

I mentioned earlier this week that serial killers fascinate me, and I hoped to one day write a serial killer book, but as I watched the series I’ll be Gone in the Dark, I realized that I had surrounded myself with the dark and macabre during the pandemic, and it was eating me alive.

As my financial situation deteriorated, I used escapism to avoid real life.

Politics, social injustice, the decline and fall of democracy, “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and the unending scroll of bad news during 2020. I was swimming in the big bad that I couldn’t control because I didn’t know how to handle the big bad in my own life.

Immersion

We are what we eat, but we become what we surround ourselves with. That’s why our parents were so picky about our friends growing up. They may have been poor judges of character, but the parents weren’t wrong.

I don’t ascribe to the prosperity gospel because among other things it made it okay to blame people for problems that were out of their control. It shredded empathy and compassion. Not familiar with it?

Prosperity gospel is an “aberrant theology that teaches God rewards faith—and hefty tithing—with financial blessings” —Christianity Today

• Wealthy? You have been rewarded for your faith.

• Sick? You don’t have enough faith.

• Poor? You don't have enough faith. Give more.

• Homeless? Give until it hurts.

You get the picture. The prosperity gospel and its proponents have bastardized the Bible for their own fiscal end. So what I’m about to say isn’t the antithesis of prosperity teaching that blames depressed people for the darkness in their lives.

Darkness isn’t a punishment in the biblical sense (except maybe for Jonah).

What I’m talking about isn’t punishment, but about vibes, and explains why our parents were so protective.

My son’s first crush and first girlfriend were both bipolar. The time he spent with those two young women did incalculable damage to his mental health. His new group of friends had several members who had attempted suicide. He began to have suicidal thoughts.

It’s not that these things were contagious, they weren’t punishment for a lack of faith, but they were the result of immersion. Michelle McNamara surrounded herself with box upon box of darkness as she researched the Golden State Killer (GSK) and his victims. She swam in the dark, and it ultimately consumed her. She was GSK’s last victim. She was also a victim of her own obsessions.

Vibin’

When I was in high school, I was a rule follower. I surrounded myself with the geeks, and graduated in the top 2% of my class. When I was in college, I surrounded myself with the party crowd. Only one of us graduated (at least at that time).

We did not rise to the highest common denominator, as my mother would say, we fell to the lowest.

I teach at a community college, and I have kids who have had rough lives and kids who have had privileged lives. They all see the world through the lens of their own experience.

One of them—pre-pandemic—had had several serious traumas that impacted his ability to learn, but he didn’t wallow in it. Instead, he created a thread of positive memes we could all use to lift our mood. He called that thread vibin’ because he wanted to surround himself with positive vibes.

I need to do the same.

Epiphany

Watching I’ll be Gone in the Dark reminded me of this student and his search for the positive. I’m sure he had rough days, but he didn’t wallow in them as I had been doing for the past year. Instead, he immersed himself in the positive.

The GSK series was dark, but it reminded me to seek out the light.

I write romantic suspense under another name, and while there is romance, there is also danger. There’s a balance, I suppose, a Yin-Yang that must be met in these novels that balances the light and the dark; the romance and the danger. But over the last year, I had become imbalanced.

I had immersed myself in the dark, and it showed.

My life will not miraculous improve if I lean into the light. My life will not miraculous improve if I give more money to the church or walk around in a fantasy world where I don’t have mounting debt and declining income. The real world exists, but I don’t have to roll around in it.

I started this post saying I don’t know how Stephen King does it. It feels as if he is surrounded by the dark. Perhaps he exorcises his demons through his work, but where’s the line? When do your demons control you? When do you drown?

Ch-ch-ch-changes

This is where I’ve landed. I have to live in the real world. I have to throw off the covers and face the monsters under my bed. I have to fill out that damned bankruptcy paperwork in my bag. I have to live with the consequences.

But I’ll handle it better if I bring in some of those positive vibes my student was so adamant about.

I’m planning changes, big and small. Many I’ve tried before. Some are new and big and scary. But they’re positive steps in the right direction, for the first time since the darkness swallowed me.

I’m traveling for work this rest of this week, so no more posts, but I’ll share some of these plans next issue.