Have you ever felt like things weren't right? That no matter what you did, you were deceiving yourself? I know I felt that way for a long time. This is part of my journey. Being born into a Catholic family I was always told that I should behave and act a certain way or else I would burn in a fiery pit of Hell for eternity. Hmmm, could it be true?
Despite all of this indoctrination, I could never reconcile what I felt with what I was being told. So, my journey began. For a number of years, I would say from the teenage years to about my early twenties, I had no spiritual direction. In those years, I dabbled, albeit lightly, into the Occult like so many disillusioned teenagers did. Even that did not fill the void of being empty of spirituality. At around the age of twenty three, I came to what I thought back then as a revelation. Instead of following established doctrine, I had decided to take matters into my own hands.
What I did was I chose to believe in a "God", or a supreme being. Not the same "God" as in any established religions, but a sort of creator of sorts with a twist. I didn't make any claims that I knew exactly how things worked, but that didn't matter. I now felt like I was spiritually whole again. I would pray every night for the well being of friends and family and even when my father passed away nine years ago my belief and faith held strong. In fact, if anything, it became stronger. For many years, up until I was the age of thirty five, I held true to that belief.
Fast forward a bit to the year 2007. This is the year that my belief started to get a bit shaky. In December of that year, my mother had an incident. I was at work when I got a call from my sister asking me if I knew where our mother was. I said that she should be home. She called me about it because she said she tried calling home and no one answered. Since she lived near our house, she said she was going to take a walk over to see if everything was okay. Once she got there, she saw my mother lying on the kitchen floor, unable to get up. My mother at the time was seventy four years old, and had pretty serious arthritis on her knees and one hip. After she fell, she simply could not get herself up.
Needless to say, she was brought to the hospital. It turned out that she had apparently drunk some alcohol and with the amount of medication she was on, it probably did her in. As a matter of fact, she seemed pretty drunk even by the time she was in the hospital. Now, someone of that age, firstly should not be drinking, was kept at the emergency room while they ran some tests and made sure she didn't break any bones, especially her hips. All looked good from that aspect, but for some reason, the doctor said that they needed to keep her there a bit longer while they performed some further tests. She didn't say immediately what the test were for, but eventually she told us it was for her heart. Apparently, my mother had a condition with her heart that required her to have a pacemaker put in. To make a long story short, she ended up spending the Christmas holidays in the hospital while waiting for the surgery.
During her stay at the hospital, I of course prayed for her well being and a speedy recovery. When the operation finally took place, it went through without a hitch. They kept her at the hospital for a couple of days past the surgery, just to ensure everything was good and finally released her in time to have her home for New Years. This incident, and certain details of what occurred while my mother was in the emergency room that I will not disclose, started me on the shaky path. But, still I held firm even though seeds of doubt had begun to sprout.
After my mother was back home from the hospital, all looked well. She actually started to look and feel better than before the surgery. This was great news and helped to suppress those seeds of doubt for a little while. Now, fast forward a little bit again to April 6, 2009. My mom's 75th birthday. On that day, my mom wanted to make a special dinner to celebrate her 75th birthday with us. But, that didn't occur. Instead, we hear a big thumb from the kitchen. My brother, my sister and myself all ran to the kitchen and saw once again that my mother was on the ground. This time however, she had managed to hit her head on something and she split her eyebrow open, right to the bone. Immediately, my brother took her to the walk in clinic just up the street, and they advised him to take her to the hospital right away. So he did. Off to the same hospital where she was back in December to have the pacemaker put in.
Instead of spending her birthday with her family and a nice meal, she spend pretty much the whole day in emergency once again. Waiting for a doctor to see her and to stitch her eyebrow. Once all was said and done, we didn't get back home until around 7pm. Now those seeds in my head started to vibrate a little, and maybe even formed a little crack so that they can grow. Again, being the stubborn mule that I sometimes can be, I held true to my belief, even if I started having doubts.
Well, the fun didn't stop there. In June of 2009, the same year as the eyebrow incident, my mother suffered a stroke. My mother already started exhibiting signs of early Alzheimer's and suffering this stroke progressed it along even quicker. The part of the brain that was damaged was in the back of the head, the part that is responsible for short term memory. This really did a number on me, and seeing my mother after her stroke forget simple things and say things that didn't make any sense really exploded those seeds into full grown plants.
This is where my journey into darkness began. I was depressed for a while because of all the things that happened and because finally, my faith, my belief, was utterly destroyed and I was left with a big void again. This is the same faith and belief that stood strong when my father passed away. Now, I was empty, I didn't know what to believe any more. Again, I turned to the Occult for some reprieve from this sense of loss, but none came. To think that I could easily replace what I have lost by reading some books about other people's beliefs is deceiving myself. This is a journey that I must make yet again and must do it on my own. I have finally come to terms with that fact that I am and have always been dark. Not Evil, but dark. I prefer all things dark; hence the name of this blog, "All Things Dark". It's a journey that could very well take me the rest of my life to figure out, but it's a journey that I must none the less take. I just hope that in the process, I am finally able to truly come to a deeper understanding of myself and life as a whole.
Dorrian Knight
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