The darkness was never this hopeless before: My heart bleeding, my mind racing, my spirit crushed. Will I ever be normal again? 

I don’t recall an internal dilemma or angst quite like it. My broken engagement, friend betrayal and familial split felt small. This was a related emotion, yes, but not a twin. I was at the bottom of the barrel and I was eating mud, an hour and a half west of Austin. 

Taking risks in life for the sake of something better is the best, worst thing you can do. I left what was so familiar with the hope of clearing out the water in my tank, convinced a move would solve most of my problems. But in the move came a search, followed by rejections. “She only ever does it to herself.” I was the fool.

My own people were standing there, pretending not to be inside, as I knocked loudly on their door. I had been so raw with them the year before but now, my honesty was my scarlet letter. I hung my hat on asking others to be vulnerable with me but I have since learned that we, professional truth seekers, are expected to stay silent… or else. 

Within my serotonin-starved brain, you couldn’t have paid me to recommit to the journey that brought me here. An hour and a half west of Austin, I felt close to hell. My heart strings recently clipped, I was dangling off the cliff of a false reality of a love that left me first. I wasn’t stepping on ground, but on unstable, temperamental, shattered shale. 

I wouldn’t be his on my birthday and Christmas would be with the four of us again. I hadn't realized, until hiking in this field, how high my expectations had been. My below-facade brokenness showed me the very things I wanted. My teacher, the resilient slate on the ground. 

Without sounding like a victim of life, I certainly felt like a victim of life. Courage and bravery do not equal immediate reward. Rather, taking risks led me into the wilderness… an hour and a half west of Austin. 

The light before, and the darkness now, left me wondering if there would ever be light again. I put on mascara to feel something, pinched my cheeks, and smiled like I was happy. I was not. What I was initially blind to was how the cosmos would align with me that day. 

She shone so bright, unable to be looked at with the naked eye. But in designed clockwork, she was muted, raw, vulnerable, standing before so many in a state she wasn’t used to. But as the moon’s darkness came and slowly left her alone, her brightness returned, but not before a burst of twinkle. The glasses had to be put back on. I have never felt so personified. 

My former, shiny days were not an illusion. They were real and I was there. They remind me I was once starry-eyed and young. The darkness robbed me of perspective. I should have seen the timetable predicting the shadows, but the aforementioned glow distracted me from the reality that was to come. But in the darkness, I couldn’t see a way to see again. Until that day, an hour and a half west of Austin. 

The sphere of darkness had to be intimate, close to home, to block something so electric. Further away, the effect of the eclipse wouldn’t have been total. I needed to greet it, shake it’s hand, for it to move on. Then as the ever-slow, shifting moon gave way, light and hope emerged. There would be an end to this dimmed time, frightening if caught off guard but beautiful if planned. 

What felt like a year and a half was only one minute and 40 seconds in the universe. Millions flocked to witness the darkness and to take part, yet here I was willing to trade anything to escape it from within. But as the moon continued on its way, I realized I could journey, scathed but very much alive, onto mine.