Give Me Your Dark
Written by Kelly on October 2nd, 2009I have never been good at small talk. I go to suburban parties and feel out of place. I feign interest. I stifle a yawn. I want to ask you to tell me dirty things about your sex life. I want to argue with you about the existence of God. Instead, you smile with chemically whitened teeth and pass me a tray of appetizers. I’m not interested in where you purchased the smoked gouda. I want you to put down your platter of cheese, pick up your shirt, and show me your scars. How else am I suppose to learn about the world if not by the map of your body, the tight fist of your skin? Clothing is just a pretty camouflage.
I want to feel things. I want to know things by proximity, by the way something bends or resists against the palming of my hand. I want to lean my head to your mouth and feel your words hot on my collar. I want your whispered breath rotten in my ear. Tell me your secrets.
I have Celtic blood that makes me certain I was a sin-eater in another lifetime, or maybe I was the goddess Tiazolteotl, purveyor of filth and lust. I’d squeeze you wicked between my thigh muscles and make you cum, then whisk away your sin in a hot bath of afterward absolution.
I am not offering you absolution here or now. What I want is certain and more selfish. I want to know that you feel as much as I do, that you too have carried hurt like a belly full of stones.
So, can we just bypass the small talk? I want every single one of you to just give me your dark. I want access to the things that make you sweat in the silence of your night time.
I need to know if your fear is anything like mine.
2
AM
*smirk*
As much as I wish to tell you, I will not.
2
AM
I fear everyday that the darkness within me will win, and the words I type today will be the last. Somedays I feel a few feet from that cliff and on other days, like today, I stare over the edge and feel the winds of fate licking my face. Don’t like small talk either. Few people ever have much to say that I care to hear for all the reasons you just listed. The facade is like a tent collapsed and I am suffocating, hoping to find my way out of the madness.
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And this is why I love you.
2
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This is why I have no friends-I cannot do smell talk, ever. It’s so pointless and meandering.
I instead get told, repeatedly and pointedly, that I am too serious.
Sigh.
2
AM
Can’t stand small talk, either, and it’s also led people to see me as “too serious”. My dark is that I often have an extraordinarily hard time relating to other people and am far too much of an exhorter. I hide those things well – but sometimes I’m concerned that I’ll blurt it all out one day.
~*
2
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Yeah, I’m no good with the small talk either. My fear, that my life will never start.
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Some times, when I write I cannot turn the dark off…
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they do not.
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If you surround yourself with chameleons you will get past the camouflage of fakeness to find what is real.
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Sorry. Typo. That previous comment should have read “you will not”.
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I can relate to this immensely. And the thing is, the thing is, I am trying to stay away from my own judgment about about that “darkness.” Because even the word “darkness” has a ring of judgment around it. I want to be real, transparent, honest, true. Is that so terrible? The hard part is realizing other people are afraid of that. They don’t want to be seen, at least not in “that” way. And the thing is, the wonderful irony is, is that the more we reveal the more that gets revealed to us.
What’s my dark? At the moment, it’s a certain fear around my body. A fear of knowing what the little niggling symptoms are about. The frustration and sadness in recognizing the command I used to have over it, and the strange command it currently has over me. I don’t think this is about aging. I think this is about something not working, or something being blocked, or pinched, or what have you. Maybe this is as simple as nerves, or a muscle that needs to be worked a little harder. Whatever it is, the fear and caution and anxiety I seem to have both around the knowing and the not knowing is something that’s new for me. And I hate it. And in my darkest dark, I hate myself for it.
2
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Everyone of us has scars. Some more, some less.
But being honest, people don’t want to see your darkness, so we hide it.
People will be shocked if we let it all out.
So, showing the dark bits of a person is never easy. It is linked with emotions we might don’t expect from that person and this is what scares people.
Once again, I know how you must feel.
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i never worried so much about my dark and ugly. but i worry my daughter will.
i worry she will need me and i won’t be able to protect her.
i worry she will grow up learning about the ugly parts of people just like i did.
and that she will be permanently stained.
i wear my scars and point them out to her.
she will not be bound by secrets.
that is my goal.
and my biggest fear.
2
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You know what’s hard? Sharing life with someone who doesn’t like the dark. And I don’t mean just husbands, although I do. I also mean mothers, and all other manner of family and friends who positively muzzle you as a result of love.
What a lonely place that can be.
It means so much to know people who are not dark-averse. It heals. It allows pinpricks of light to come through. That means you.
xo
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thanks – this reached out to me today
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You and me both. Oh yes, they can keep the small talk.
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I’ll tell you my dark. I’ll spill it out all over you, until you are ensconced in the midnight of my soul. I am in the darkest place I have ever imagined. Come on in. I think there’s a light around here somewhere…
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AM
“Belly full of stones”. This reminds me of Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”. We all have that infamous darkside that leaks out when we can’t plug all of the holes in our soul. Right now me and my darkside are practicing detente; we’re not at war, we’re just keeping a watchful eye on each other.
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To follow up on the small talk thread: What is small talk? I believe it is the want to communicate, but the fear that any mention of “Big Talk” will drive the other person away. I think this is why you can get caught with a “story talker”, i.e. one who tells nonsensical stories that trap you for what seems like days. These people are wrapped in their own fear of rejection and thats why you can’t get a word in, for that word might lead to rejection. Fear is just a part of being human, and small talk is one way of avoiding it because its safe.
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Don’t like small talk at all. Too much dark to say in one comment. Being comfortable with our darkness is an important part of staying whole I think.
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I just did. Before I knew you asked.
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My fear is visceral, a palpation from what is deep and needful in me. It has a name, a face, a voice, a smell. I have no absolution.
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More than I ever show.
I carry the guilt that comes with not doing enough to save another’s life.
I carry the rage that comes with those that do unspeakable things through addictions. The scars that I will have to carry as confrontation + recovery process can only = relapse.
I carry loss. The loss of childhood that comes with too much responsibility at such a young age.
I carry it all plus so much more. I am broken and damaged. Yet I pick myself up, carry on, survive. The dark lies within, but I fight it back each and every day.
4
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Your eyes
Burn like
Cigarettes wild
Into my
Soul and
Out of
My heart.
Why must
Your eyes
Keep me
Still burning
Like wild
Dreams?
To yearn
For one
Single touch
Allowing me
The pleasure
Of looking
Into your
Soul.
—————
There’s my pain.
5
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I’ve never been one for small talk. It escapes me how people can do that. Stand around and just jabber on about nothing. I can’t do it. It is like sandpaper against my skin or nails on the chalkboard. Great post.
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wow, that is an incredible post. I just found you through @kirtsy and want to stalk the rest of your archives now.
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What a great piece of writing.
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I’ve been to a party and asked “Tell me about your life” which I thought was odd, since I didn’t know him! It would take more than two minutes of his time to answer. Sorta like … “How are you?” in the process of walking away. One doesn’t really want to know how you are, it just sounds polite~
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AM
I am like this too. I’ve grown good at small talk, but small talk ultimately bores me. I want to see the aunthentic core of people. Listen to the pulsing of their fears and dreams. To know who they are truly, when all the masks and politenesses are stripped away.
This is why the work I do is sacred to me. Because I am given permission to delve deeply into the core of pain, because I am asked to travel down into the dark places.
As for my fears? Most of them are inherited. A history of loss, and the memories of ancestors that flit through my dreams. War and snow and fear and poverty and persecution. The deaths of children. And my own dark, which was primarily about self-destruction. The last time I went there was after my son’s birth.
This is the reason why I write on Livejournal. I am honest in my writings, but I am careful in who has access to them. To protect other people mostly. Also to protect me against the anxieties of my family.
(I have no expectations about whether you will want to do so, but I like you and I trust you and if you want to see the more raw things then I’ll show you where to look and email you the instructions).
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AM
The sharing of scars, to me, should be done in secret – one on one – the strong light of the public forum tends to flatten things and take away their true form and significance. In secret, in the dark, all the wiggles and bumps of the scars can be explored calmly, thoroughly, precisely.
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YES! YES! YES! I can do the small talk, but I want the deep. I want to know I’m not alone.
This is incredible right here.
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I can’t do small talk. Have never developed a knack for it. And while we’re talking about fears, that’s one of mine. I clam up at parties. Look for a dark corner or another person standing alone smoking a cigarette looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. Because that’s a kindred soul. Either that or I share too much and make people uncomfortable. But I go and do that because that’s what one does. And I’m afraid of not being one.
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i feel as much as you do.
the dark? the hookers? the abortions? the rape? the drugs? the beatings? the broken glass? the scars? the blood curdling screams of painful ecstacy that might wake the baby?
jail?
the rage and the depression and the running away and the slits for eyes that could make you bleed from a mile across town?
the jealousy and the lust and the affairs and the loning for just one chance with him that i don’t even know. alone. in a dark closet?
what do you want? you got it.
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But that would require facing the dark to give it a name, a description, a label.
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Mine is.
2
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This is quite beautiful and elegant. I was at a party for Halloween this weekend and this was exactly how I felt. I don’t want your drunken small talk. I want your sins, I want to be inside your head
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Selfish emo bullshit, that’s what this is. Let people be people, and be yourself, idiot. Not every conversation has to be gut-wrenchingly serious. Life is full of more than emotional trauma. Get a life, and maybe that “small talk” won’t sound so small.
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i don’t know you, but that was amazing. it’s like you read my mind
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Great work, I love it!
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I think the scariest things are the things we use to trap ourselves. You can be afraid of the government, afraid of control… but what’s really scary is waking up and realizing that you’ve been trapping yourself in your own hand-built cage…
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In response to Tank: It’s hard to go through life feeling alone. When you can’t find the others, the freaks, the weirdos that are really your secret shadow family waiting for you right now in the wide wide world, it’s hard. But once you find them, once the others come together, we have a different kind of small talk. It’s up to us to create our realities, our tribes, our links.
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PM
Yes. My fears are the same as yours. Whether substantial or trivial, those similarities are everything. Everything that makes us human.
7
AM
You find your soul mate and start to tell. You listen hard, knowing that every word could cut to the quick if used wrong. You live your life. You then grow a darker part of your soul that you cannot even tell your partner. It is too painful and will upset them. Live for the minute hoping they do not find that part until too late and hopefully in time they realise you love them so much that you do not want to burden then with the knowledge. Chemo is a very lonely treatment. She is my light and her smile is all I live for.
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AM
Will you marry me?
That is beautifully and powerfully written. So much so that my most private and painful secrets suddenly seem too banal to mention. And, of course, they are. I don’t think you are interested so much in trivia as in making a deep connection to someone else, and I think that’s what we all desperately want. There’s a line I like from Heart of Darkness, the narrator Marlowe says, “we live as we dream, alone.” I think that essential loneliness is something we are always trying to get out of or past. In art, conversation, sex, and just the general noise of life we are trying to either forget that loneliness or to reach across the void to someone else. But we can never really touch. The best we can do is waive and shout some encouragement. Yes, my fears are like yours. And my hungers are too.
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I fear the world. I fear every waking moment and every glimpse of it. I fear the thoughts and ideals of everyone. But more then that I’m afraid of myself. I’m afraid of what one sentence that passes my lips can do to another. I’m afraid that nothing is all that there is and ever will be. Even more though, throughout all the fear that I find within myself. The pain I feel every waking moment. I also feel love, a tainted and selfish love but it’s there. It leaves deeper scars then my fear ever will.
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I love this concept. I have always believed that humanity could save itself if only its inhabitants were to practice complete beautiful honesty in all circumstances. For this would only be possible if each individual was aware of each other’s true nature and responded not with hate and fear but acceptance. We may have differences but we are linked by the similarity of consciousness. We are capable, but its very hard for me to believe that we will tread such paths. This gives me hope.
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You can have my dark. I will share my dark with you, if only so it has someone else to consume.
It will eat at you, shrivel your soul and destroy any joy that you may find. So you can have it, I don’t want to feed it anymore. I want to feel joy again and let the light back into my heart.
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I fucking love this.
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Absolutely love it.
My friend is trying to convince me to flirt with guys at the bar (I’m convinced she’s trying to live vicariously through me, as she’s in a steady relationship). But I need to talk to someone seriously before I can just press myself up against them.
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PM
Found this site through Stumble. This post made me join. Excllent writing, but you sound pretty fearless to me. And I know what “fearless” means.
When I was arrested for pot smuggling, the Feds told me I’d go to prison for life if i didn’t squeal. I didn’t. I resolved to spend the rest of my life politicizing my fellow prisoners and shaming the guards into quitting. I “only” got 63 months, and did pretty well on both my resolutions. I’m out now, but I’m not afraid of going back.
True strength is expressed through gentleness and generosity. True courage is expressed by allowing yourself to be vulnerable. I know that whatever happens, I can handle it. Everything will not just be OK in the end, it will be beautiful.
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PM
For starters, I think I jizzed myself reading that.
No, it is not a pick-up line. No, I don’t expect an answer.
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AM
This is very beautiful and honest.
I began a film movement that is concerned with a lot of the same kinds of things- a need to be honest, to address the shadow.
Here’s an essay I recently published about it- also there’s a manifesto on there too.
http://www.mungbeing.com/issue_28.html?page=32&sub_id=1565#1565
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AM
I too find small talk not only tedious, but outside of my abilities to pull off. How serious am I? My father told me that I went from being a baby directly to being an middle-aged man before I was three. I’m sixty-five now and have only one good friend, the lady who lives with me. She’s a wonderful companion, but is not at all interested in my dark. But you say that you are. Does my age change your mind? I have a lifetime of dark, most of which I accept and even embrace it. Imagine a lie that is all light and no dark. Where is the beauty in that? Would such a life be worth living?
You say you want dark; well ask once more and you shall receive.
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Sorry all the other comments posters talk about themselves. This is great, great writing.
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I get restless. I think what you wrote all the time.
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Thank you for reassuring me that I’m not alone with those thoughts. Really, thank you.
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All of my dark swirls around as choatic impulses. I have scars and bruises from lovers, from myself, from nights climbing fences and picking locks.
My dark pulls in the people I take home. I will teach you to slap and make you keep your eyes open while I dig my nails into your thigh. I will tell you to bite harder and then mention to you in a restaurant the next day how wet the stinging makes me. I will hold you against a wall and stare at your mouth as I push my fingers inside you.
I write dirty stories and I spend every day looking for new material. For the bright, burning secrets inside everyone I touch. For knives in bed. The reaction when I tell you where to scratch. All the dark things you want but don’t say. Yet.
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PM
This was beautiful. I write out all of my dark on my blog. It’s cathartic.
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I don’t fear the evil, chaotic parts of myself anymore, i embrace them and i love them. My only fear is that people might see me for the selfish sociopathic monster i am and cut me off from the world i depend on to build my house and grow my food. So that’s my secret, half the time i’m numb, like the drug dentists inject into your jaw, its as if it courses through my veins and other people become nothing more to me than a giant chemical reaction that can be sustained for about 80 years.
17
AM
Kelly,
I feel really strange reading your post, because I feel exactly the way you do. I even buy smoked gouda to feel like I fit with the rest. But I don’t.
What’s the difference? What made me so fearful?
I majored in English, and have a burning desire to write creatively. How did you get started in your blog? How can I do the same – channel the darkest thoughts that I have to people who can see them, feel likewise, and express our similarity. It gives comfort to us all that we are not alone in our assessment of our atmosphere, doesn’t it?
I just went on a date where the guy told me I was too critical of my surroundings. I asked him what I was supposed to be, if not mindful of the life I was experiencing? What better way to interact with vitality? He wanted a girl who had no turmoil, no past. Just cheese. Smoked gouda and, most likely, birth control that always worked out for her. His criticism left me broken. I cried after our date, and had a panic attack the next day.
So, Kelly, tell me how to get started. It seems that writing might be my only hope. Since I can’t say my observations, social criticism, and witty mockeries of demographics out loud, I might need to turn to a more separate place for purging. Please give me suggestions, advice, experiences that can help me on my way.
Thank you for this post. It helps to know there are kindred spirits out there.
-Rachel.
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I am truly touched by the bluntness and realness of your blog. I have been searching myself for answers that I am unsure exist but some how I feel comfort in knowing that I am not the only one in the world who has thoughts along those lines. In laments terms…cut the shit, lets get down to the truth and make the best of the time we have now. If that is too serious, too real or too much for someone then they should not be wasting my time. thank you for your blog post.