If you’re scared of the dark, chances are it’s not really the dark that scares you—it’s what’s hiding within that darkness.
But this isn’t the case pretty much anytime you find yourself in the darkness because there isn’t anything under your bed. Or in your closet. And, no, there isn’t a face embedded into the pile of clothes on that chair in the corner of your room either.
This feeling is dreadful, and there isn’t any doubt about that. The uneasiness that comes with being alone, engulfed in pure darkness, static ringing in your ears, getting so paranoid that you can practically hear your heart beating through your throat—it’s not a peaceful feeling. Some would even call it a feeling of impending doom.
Now, impending doom can hit an individual in different ways, each way coming with different sensations. If I found myself amid a tornado in a bunker underground, the impending doom I’d feel would most likely come true. If I felt like something bad occurred to some of the structures above me, when I’d leave the bunker after the storm subsided, I’d have a 99 percent chance of being right about that.
It gets dicey when I find myself feeling this impending doom of essentially nothing at all. The world’s weight nowadays can make a feeling of doom linger for longer than it needs to. It’s a curse to feel so much at all times with no way to briefly pause these strong feeling states when they become too much to handle. And, more recently, it seems almost impossible to find an escape.
It feels like everywhere you turn there’s something wrong. There’s a whole lot wrong with our society, there’s a whole lot wrong with our wildlife and there’s surely someone on the other side of a screen telling you there’s something wrong with the very essence of you, too.
I find the dangers of social media a problem I discuss over and over again, basically turning myself into a record that keeps skipping—but it’s such a vital issue to bring awareness to the state of our youth right now. This doom is a fire and the negativity is its fuel. There is always something you’re not doing enough of, and there’s always something you’re doing too much of. It’s completely and utterly exhausting to sit and scroll through apps that are supposed to provide entertainment that spews unnecessary, indirect insults at us and makes us hyper-aware of insecurities we didn’t even know we could have.
That point aside, another idea that goes along with the feeling of impending doom is the heavy, inevitable existence of the unknown. Much like the darkness, what’s hiding within it is unknown. The future for all of us is unknown. The course of your personal life is unknown—and this is utterly terrifying.
Sometimes I lay in bed at night and stare at my ceiling in silence because I become full of this overwhelming sense of hopelessness for wherever Earth is headed. I see news articles about climate change, the coral reef dying, animals rapidly becoming endangered, prices inflating to extremities and it can create a very intense feeling that maybe nothing we’re doing will ever be enough to fix this. Maybe we are too far gone, maybe there is no coming back anymore. It’s easy to become trapped in this mindset where you’ll find yourself thinking, “Why am I working so hard to achieve something that will mean nothing in 15 years when the Earth finally dies?”
But, something I’ve had a revelation about is the idea that realizing things can change will release a sense of hope rather than hopelessness. Instead of shouting about how there isn’t any love left in this world, sit down and remember that you love, so love exists. I love, and that means somebody does.
Because we aren’t alone in this feeling of doom, it opened my eyes to realize that I’m not the only one lying in a puddle of anxiety and sickness over this issue, other people feel the same way as me. And when people talk about it, I know that this doom exists for us all. That might just be the first hurdle to an acceptance and pathway to change.
Something as little as this blog, for example. I’m writing about this because I feel it so intensely, but someone might read it and feel a little at ease. Maybe a sigh of relief and a whisper of: “I’m not alone.” Because we aren’t. None of us are.
Possibly, shining light on the negative things isn’t the only light we should be shining. Instead of just speaking about how living conditions are rapidly becoming unaffordable, let’s talk about how there’s an international group of bikers who fight against child abuse in court by looking tough and giving the children the confidence to testify against their abusers.
In every bad situation, there is a high chance of someone good doing something to fight off that bad. Even though it never is, and never will be, entirely good, your sense of doom is trying to tell you that you have something in you that wants to make a change.
