I just wanted to add a story that is close to home, for all intentions this is real, just presented as semi-fiction. The theme was the determination / overcoming adversity...
The Message in the Darkness
The darkness had become my timeless friend. The message given in the darkness would guide me through the challenges I would face. Simple advice, but not always easy to remember. The advice, when followed, always provided directions back to light.
We had only made the decision the month before. We were both thriving for independence, both of us had work that provided the means to make it happen. Then we secured a place near a bar.
For a time things were good, not a long time, but for a time. Many nights we spent partying, often waking up with someone new. Other times with memories alone.
The cliche is that when it rains, it storms.
The challenges began at work; the bosses called in a group of us and told about cutbacks and that we all were out of work.
In frustration, found comforts in the arms of an anonymous encounter. The following morning, without waking my new found acquaintance, went to look for work. A short time later, come home and find the woman with my roommate in his bedroom, the door left open. Was this intentional for me to witness? An accident? A stunned silence washed over me, and I could do nothing but walk out of the apartment.
The combination of the desire to confront and inform of the misfortune had boiled over for a few days. My roommate stopped returning home after work. The rent was due, it was the last month I could afford, and my roommate would be back any day to repay the cost. So, I covered the whole and expected to be repaid any day.
It was weeks later when my roommate walked in, I at the table looking through the classified ads for a job prospect. He had a different look to him; he apologized before telling me the tale. The woman had showed him the same level of faithfulness that I had seen. He continued to tell the story, how he met his new found friend of crystal meth. Then finished by telling me that he didn't have the money to pay me back
That’s when the rage boiled over. I had emptied his room of his belongings and the apartment of his presence. The room was still, except the panic that was setting in.
I remembered my encounter with the darkness. It was like any other day. A sudden sense of shortness of breath when the darkness flowed over me. The voice in the darkness broke the stillness, “Don’t worry. Everything works itself out the way it must be. Keep doing what you can and everything will work itself out.” I woke up from the coma several days later, with nothing but lost time and the memory.
There was little comfort this time. It was only a few weeks that cost me my best friend, my girlfriend, my job, and my place to live. In spite of the worry, I did what I had to do, keep trying. It was on the edge of conceding defeat. The efforts I was making had begun to turn things around… a job offer, new friends started to surface. It was only through perseverance and the advice given in the darkness where I started seeing a new light.