-Tasha, California Institution for Women in Chino, CA
It isn’t the darkness that I’m afraid of, it’s the light. Light illuminates parts of ourselves that we bury because we find them unacceptable. That self lives inside because we are afraid to confront who we might really be; like how we become overachievers trying to cover up low self-esteem, so a false self becomes like an SPF to shield our ego from the sometimes blinding light of truth.
This is where under the cloak of darkness, jealousy, pride, boastfulness, rudeness, hate, and apathy hide. It’s cool to inflict injury upon others because the radiance of divine love is not here. In the darkness, ignorance is bliss. The environment prides itself on cruelty, violence, and foolish boasting to gain the acceptance of others that are stumbling along in the darkness.
Yet, we communicate with what we’ve got and we’ve got this rage. We are thugs, we are your hypocrisy mirrored. What you condemn with your mouth, but condone by your actions, the fruit of inequality in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
In the darkness I am justified. So, it isn’t the darkness I’m afraid of. I know it well. It is the light.