Whenever I imagine dark moments in my life, bright light beams from around me. The world around me seeming to mock me as my pieces fall to the floor. My room has an Ikea lamp; it’s one of the ones with a plastic decorative lamp shade. It hung from the ceiling lighting my room, and to be honest, it was very tacky. I looked at that lamp for hours on end wondering where I could go if I couldn’t get up off of the floor. The haphazardly hung lamp illuminating my pale, sun deprived skin. Sometimes I imagined it falling on me and setting my room ablaze, and me too heavy to stop, drop, and roll. 

 

Or the many times the florescent ceiling lamps at school pierced my head, making my heart beat even faster. I remember looking at those dreaded lights while curled up on the bathroom floor hyperventilating. 

 

“Please stop shining, just for one minute.” My brain called for mercy, but alas, the lights wouldn’t turn off. 

 

Now, when the lights shine, they don’t hurt my head. I dance in the warm flames of a campfire, no longer wondering about the feeling of the inferno scorching my skin like a pig on a spit. I’ll grab my friend’s hand, and we’ll dance in the sun shower. My bare feet pitter-patter against the hot sand as I sprint towards the ocean that will inevitably cool me off; the scars on my thighs are deep, showing because of my swimsuit, but they’re covered with tissue.

 

I wonder now, was the light truly a mockingbird? Repeating a memory from my old smiles, my old laughs? If it was, why was it so loud? Or was it a ruby cardinal? Was it singing a high-pitched song searching for something?

 

The light was searching for something, someone to connect to. Someone to understand the light is there for a reason. It may be blinding and bright, and you might have to shelter your eyes from the intensity. But once you gain the courage to stare directly into the fire, you might see hope is a precious tool that annoys you until you give in and believe that, yeah, you can live. You can persevere until the light turns warm instead of the cold and fluorescent.