More Questions Than Answers and Answers in Unexpected Places

Sometimes, working through a moment of internal grief and dark moments help us learn something beautiful.

by fourth year Aubrey Ford

My first draft of this article was a sprawling, downward spiral that followed my inner thought process after a poorly timed moment with a close friend. It inspired a deep (but familiar) loneliness within me and brought up all kinds of internal questions. The more I tried to answer them, the more questions I found. I tend to keep these processes to myself. It’s extremely personal and wrought with my deepest insecurities and fears. I thought it might be interesting or helpful or at least a good creative endeavor to document how I worked through a moment of (arguably one-sided) internal grief. I wrestled with it for a long time and I just kept getting sadder and sadder, trying to figure it out and capture it for an article.

I won’t share what I ended up writing, not yet, but if you’re curious, you can try to figure it out. This is what brought me to the depths of despair and a week's worth of soul searching. Good luck.

What I will tell you, however, is that my article was very raw and honest. Though I find the situation of its conception a little silly, I learned a lot about myself. I had to stare my worst fears in the face and try to make sense of the worlds of complexity and pain I found staring back. It wasn’t pretty nor was it fun, but in the darkest moments, I created something beautiful and poignant and tragic and messy and real. Sometimes I thought I’d gotten it right for a few hours, maybe a full day. I’d sit with it again and realize maybe I was a little wrong. It was starting over and building from the ground up with new intention. It was human.

What made it difficult was being honest with myself and admitting what it was that I felt inside. Exploring how I really felt relieved the pressure, just a bit. It didn’t make the pain go away or cure me of my insecurities. But it was already so much better than trying to spare myself the real pain of what I knew I knew. After it was out in the open, I chose to sit with it. It was uncomfortable as hell. I felt embarrassed and hot behind my ears and like everyone knew all my secrets. I was stripped bare. It sucked. But I didn’t fight it or run back to where I had been before. There is no going back in moments like this.

I didn’t act or try to make it go away, I just felt deeply uncomfortable. But in this stillness were answers to the questions that had just brought me more questions before. I recognized that I had a relationship with my pain. That sometimes, even though it felt bad, it felt good to be sorrowful, that my sorrow was familiar and had become home. I could keep returning to it, burrow deeper into my nest, but I could also choose something new.

Sometimes, we can learn something beautiful from our darkest moments. I will not lie to you. It was not easy. I was facing the tortures of my own mind, willing myself to not run away. I felt like I was going in circles before because I was. I expected something different while following the same patterns, left dazed and confused when I ended up right where I’d started. I had to make a different choice to find something I had not already found before.

In your next endeavors, I hope you listen to what it is inside you that is begging to be heard. Sit in the stillness, in the discomfort, and perhaps you will find the solution you have been longing for.