When the Darkness Set In

When the Darkness Set In

It was terribly cold.

Snow was falling, and it was almost dark.

Not the gentle kind of snow that feels quiet and soft,

but sharp, stinging flakes that struck the skin

like reminders that the body was still here

whether the mind wanted to be or not.

The snow was ice-cold,

like the feeling this darkness had cast into my heart.

This was not the kind of dark that falls across the earth

when the sun goes down

and the world simply turns its face away from light.

This was the kind of dark that sets in

when you realize time has run out.

The kind of dark that doesn’t arrive suddenly,

but instead catches up with you—

slowly, deliberately—

as if it has always been walking behind you,

waiting for the moment you could no longer outrun it.

This was the dark that arrives

when truth is brought fully into the light,

exposed and undeniable,

and then settles in anyway.

The kind of truth that doesn’t resolve itself

just because it’s finally seen.

It settles.

It presses downward.

It shakes the very ground you stand on

until you’re no longer sure

what was ever solid to begin with.

Your entirety begins to crumble

because the darkness is so heavy,

so encompassing,

that it becomes hard to breathe.

The ice-cold snow was the only part of reality

sharp enough, present enough,

to keep my mind from being completely lost.

The sting on my cheeks.

The ache in my fingers.

The numbness setting into my toes.

Sensations small enough to anchor me

to something tangible

while everything else began to slip.

Because my thoughts had started to spiral.

The spiral of control—

what I could have done differently,

what I should have seen sooner,

what I mistakenly believed I could manage

if I tried hard enough.

The spiral of lies—

the ones told to me,

the ones told around me,

and the ones I had quietly told myself

to survive.

The spiral of uncertainty—

where nothing ahead had shape or certainty,

and nothing behind felt safe to return to.

And when the darkness finally set in—

everything shattered.

After that, time stopped behaving the way it used to.

Minutes stretched thin,

then collapsed in on themselves,

losing their edges.

I couldn’t tell if I was moving forward

or simply repeating the same moment

over and over again

with slight variations.

The world continued,

but at a distance—

as if I were watching it through thick glass.

I knew what I was supposed to do.

Stand.

Walk.

Answer when spoken to.

Nod at the appropriate moments.

Breathe when my lungs reminded me to.

Everything became instruction-based.

There was no room for feeling.

Feeling required too much energy,

and all of mine was being used

to simply remain upright

without collapsing inward.

Hunger disappeared.

So did warmth.

So did fear.

Not because things were okay—

but because my body had decided

this was not the time to fall apart.

Shock wrapped itself around me

like insulation.

A buffer between what had happened

and what I could actually process.

I moved through days

like an outline of myself.

Present enough not to alarm anyone.

Functional enough not to invite questions.

Empty enough not to feel.

People spoke to me.

Their words arrived late,

as if they had to travel a long distance

before landing.

Sometimes I answered.

Sometimes I smiled.

Sometimes entire conversations vanished

as soon as they ended,

leaving no trace behind.

Sleep came in fragments.

Dreams, if they appeared at all,

were flat and colorless—

as though my mind had drained itself

of anything vivid

to conserve energy.

I wasn’t healing.

I wasn’t breaking.

I was surviving.Anger didn’t arrive loudly.

It didn’t explode.

It didn’t demand attention.

It crept in.

At first, it felt like warmth returning to my hands.

A pulse behind my eyes.

A tightening in my jaw

that I hadn’t noticed

until it refused to let go.

It wasn’t rage.

It was recognition.

A low, steady knowing

that something had been taken

and I had been expected

to be grateful for the lesson.

The numbness cracked

just enough to let heat through.

I began to notice the unfairness

of things I had previously absorbed

without question.

The way I had explained myself.

The way I had softened truths

to keep others comfortable.

The way I had swallowed anger

to maintain peace

that was never mutual.

Anger brought memory with it.

Not just what happened—

but what should have happened.

The protection that never arrived.

The accountability that was always deferred.

The apologies that remained hypothetical,

conditional, or absent entirely.

This anger was not chaotic.

It was precise.

It lined things up.Sorted through the wreckage.

Pointed clearly to what was broken

and who had walked away

while it was breaking.

For the first time,

my anger wasn’t trying to destroy anything.

It was trying to name something.

It said:

This mattered.

I mattered.

And this should not have happened.

There was grief in it—

but the grief no longer swallowed me whole.

Anger held the grief upright.

Gave it edges.

Boundaries.

It didn’t ask to be liked.

It didn’t soften itself

to be digestible.

It stood there, unapologetic,

refusing to disappear

just because it made others uncomfortable.

And I understood then:

Anger was not the opposite of healing.

It was the part of me

that survived long enough

to speak.

I did not forgive.

Not because I was bitter.

Not because I wanted to carry hatred forward.

But because forgiveness was never owed

as a prerequisite for my healing.

Forgiveness had been used against me before—

as a moral deadline,

a pressure point,

a way to rush me past

what had not been repaired.

Anger was uninterested in performance.

It did not care about appearing evolved.

It did not care about making others comfortable

with the truth of what they had done

or failed to do.

Anger asked only one thing of me:

Stop pretending this didn’t cost you.

So I did.

I stopped reframing.

Stopped softening.

Stopped searching for meaning

inside harm

that required accountability, not poetry.

There were losses that did not need silver linings.

Wounds that did not become sacred

just because I survived them.

Anger allowed me to say that

without collapsing.

It did not demand revenge.

It did not demand justice delivered by my hands.

It demanded accuracy.

That what happened was real.

That it hurt.

That it altered me.

That distance—not absolution—was required.

This anger was not poison.

It was a gate.

And once it closed behind me,

I did not look back

to bless the ground

I had crawled across.

Peace did not come from forgiveness.

It came from no longer arguing with reality.

From no longer rewriting the past to make it easier to carry.

Peace came when I stopped reaching backward

for what never reached for me.

I did not need closure.

I did not need understanding.

I did not need reconciliation.

I needed truth.

And I needed distance.

Some endings do not soften with time.

They clarify.

And clarity—

quiet, firm, unyielding—

became the ground beneath my feet.

I walked forward

without blessing the harm.

Without forgiving

what was never repaired.

Still breathing.

Still standing.

Whole.

© 2025 Ellen Tjaden