Do you think it is possible to see the light in a very dark place? Do you think a scared child can find her way out of a scary place or situation? Have you ever been to a place that is so dark, so black, that you cannot see your hand in front of your face? I’m not on about a dark tunnel or a dark country lane but the kind of dark that can take you over. The kind that you can feel inside your lungs as you try to breathe. The kind that gently wraps itself around your throat as you try to call out, only allowing the smallest of squeaks to escape. The kind that finds its way into the very core of your soul. I have.

As children, we expect nothing more from this life but love and affection, somewhere safe and secure to call home, to have playthings or playmates and maybe the odd treat occasionally.
As children, this is a right that they should expect. This is not merely a wish or dream, but their right as human beings.
We as children, see things in the greatest light of all. Wonder, innocence and simplicity. We as children do not see what lies behind a comment or a deed. We only see with wide open, beautiful innocence.
What happens to us then, I hear you ask?
We happen. People.

As a child I wanted the same as all kids. Fun, parents, home and love. Most of it I got, I think. Why, I think? Because I can only remember some of my childhood. Most of my memories I’m glad to say are happy ones. I remember my baby brother home from hospital after his birth…I can still see my mother climbing out the back of the ambulance in her pink floral housecoat, holding him. After that nothing. I remember the room I shared with my older sister and the double bed we shared and her getting angry with me because I was scared and didn’t want to go to sleep. She wanted to get up and go out with her friends.


Why didn’t I want to go to sleep? Because I didn’t want to see them. The faces that haunted my sleep. The faces that appeared when the room got dark. I was three when my brother was born but I knew those faces even then. Big, black, horrific visions laughing at me, leering and waiting for me to go to sleep so they could invade my dreams. There was one place I do remember being scared of. Our cellar.
There was a door off the entrance hall that led down to it. If I close my eyes, I can still see it, smell it. It was dark in one area as it was only lit by a single bare light bulb. It had no shade over it so you could see the filament inside. There were brick walls, covered in green moss and an overwhelming smell of damp. It made me feel sick. It scared me. The faces were there. That’s where they hid in the daytime. I used to walk across to the other side of the hall rather than walk past the door in case they tried to grab me.
I still feel sick at the memory of that cellar even now. I still feel the fear I felt as a child over it, and the dark. The dark in that cellar was the dark I tried to describe earlier. The fear I felt was like the dark I described earlier. All encompassing, all consuming.

It never leaves you. Once you have been in that dark, breathed it in and given it life, it’s always there.
I finally discovered what it was and what gave it its power. Me.
This Dark is our fear. We give it life; we allow it to live and to grow. How? The means to its conception may be as varied as there are shades of green. Pain. Abuse. Death. Neglect. Abandonment. Many other ‘monsters’ you could probably name.
The power that allows it to grow is our inability to do anything about that. As children, these matters are often out of our control but the feelings, the pain, guilt, hurt etc. feed these ‘monsters’. As children, we cannot be held responsible for what others do to us but we have become experts at carrying around the negative feelings with us until when we reach adulthood, they have changed our expectation s. They now are huge monsters with a life force and energy of their own, pulling our strings and controlling us.


Sometimes, some of us can be very lucky and find peace and a way of killing the monster as a child, maybe through art or music etc... Sometimes this may happen through very loving families who are aware of the hurt or suffering. But most of us carry them around like donkeys on our backs, wondering why life is so hard, why are we always the victims?
There is a line of thought…’be careful what you wish for because you just might get it’.
If we get stuck on this merry-go-round, what we think is going to happen, probably will.

I am not saying that we asked to get beaten up, raped, abused, and robbed or whatever. Just that if we feel we are victims, if we can never see the person we were meant to be, that beautiful human being with so much potential as to be able to create whatever they want from this life, we will never be free of the monsters, the Dark.

We need to learn that it’s ok to say we can’t cope, its ok to ask for help, its ok to say I’m hurting and in pain. It’s ok to know when to walk away. It’s ok.
We have a right to live. To live in the light, not the dark. There is only one person that can give life to the light. You. Me. Us.
Only by saying we don’t want to carry the pain anymore, to ask for and receive with a willing heart, help offered to us. Only then can we move from darkness into Light.

I have asked for help. I want to be free of the monsters, the dark. It isn’t always easy, in fact it can be down right hard. One thing I have learned though, life, God, the Universe or whoever or whatever you believe in, will never give us anymore than we can cope with at any one time.
There have been times in my life where I felt I just could not go on. I had no more fight left. No more strength. But do you know what, when you sit down with someone else and you talk about things and see things from an outside perspective, you realise you always had just enough to cope, to manage.
You realise what strength you did have to overcome whatever it is you went through. I can now see the smallest glimmer of the Light. Its very small…but its there.
The dark still hovers around, the monsters are starting to look smaller and let’s face it…crap happens sometimes.
But the wonderful realisation that one day, I hope to stand in the Light, naked (not literally!), unashamed, unafraid, is seeming like it might actually become a reality.
I shed many tears as I write this. Maybe remembering where I have been. Maybe out of empathy and compassion for where you have been…or still are…or maybe just for myself, because it’s ok to cry, to feel. That is MY right.

I hope too, others find their crack where the Light shines in because once you see it, you don’t want to let it go. Hold it tight. Stand in as much of it as you can no matter how small it may be.
We are special. We have been in the dark. But one day maybe, just maybe, we will go from the darkness to Light.
We will have joy and hope and laughter and happiness…and peace in our lives.
We will experience our birthright. Our reason for being on this planet. The path which we were meant to be on before the darkness made us lose our way.
I wish much love to all who come into contact with my life, even those who have hurt me. I wish to no longer be a victim. I WILL NOT be a victim. I wish to live. I wish to give life to all the good things I want in my life and to give much gratitude for all I do have. My wonderful children and their partners, my dear friends and my life.


© L. Carroll 2011
(Excerpt from Moonbeams, God and Fairydust)