Survive the Night

“Survive the night.”

I say it out loud to myself as if it’s my job description. For the next few hours, it will be. I recognize the signs early. The weight of sadness and anger lurking in the undercurrent of even my happiest moments is swelling and about to wash over me. Riptides of emotion pulling me off my feet and out into the darkness. 

It will get worse. I will start to catalog and compound the wounds I have experienced. If I were to describe to someone why I feel so desperately low, it would sound paltry and pathetic. Perhaps it is. Holly Golightly called it the Mean Reds. It’s a human experience and I no longer imagine I am unique or special for enduring it. 

I know the only thing I can do is go to bed and trust sleep to balance my body’s chemistry. But I don’t want to. I want someone to sympathize with me, to make me feel less alone. I scroll through my list of contacts, but it’s past midnight, and I don’t feel there’s anyone I can call. Why should I disturb their sleep? My friends are not on-call therapists and what could they possibly say to help someone who just needs to go to bed? 

I briefly consider reaching out to the ether and posting something on social media. I know I will hate myself in the morning for being a desperate, clingy, and pathetic character, but maybe someone will write back, giving a shot of dopamine, however small, to make me feel better. Right now, all I want is to feel better. I want to stop hurting. 

I used to enjoy this pain because at least I was feeling something, and I imagined that was the same thing as life, itself. But the years go by and I am tired. I’m tired of wondering if it ever gets better than this.

Prayers spoken in the midst of the Mean Reds are unlike the cliché phrases I churn out in calmer times. In this moment, my prayers are guttural screams, fist slamming against the wall, swearing at the heavens. Irreverent and presumptuous, a narcissistic pot yelling at the Potter. And yet I sense this offering is more acceptable in His sight than paragraphs of pious words prayed in complacency. 

These moments of extreme loneliness and despair have something to teach; they show me where my heart lies. In the light of normal, everyday routine, my hopes and dreams appear soft and whitewashed. They seem benign, but when I scream into the night, my words are naked, revealing raw avarice, lust, and pride. They were there the whole time, mixed with the sadness and anger that moves beneath the surface. 

If there is ugliness within us, it is grace that reveals it, even if this revelation comes in the form of pain. I remember the Greek poet who wrote, “In our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” Perhaps this is what the Psalmist meant when He asked God to “search me and know my heart. Test me and know my deepest thoughts. See if there is any wicked way within me.”* Maybe God answered his prayer with the Mean Reds.

The night is not only a thing to be survived. It is also grace that reveals my wandering heart and draws it back to the Source.

J. 

*Psalm 139:23-24

Dec. 14, 2021