Leaving, Again ( Last Note)

For a long time, as a child, I couldn’t fall asleep unless there was a small source of light nearby.
A hallway lamp. A crack in the door. A soft glow I could blink toward if I needed reassurance.
Surrendering to darkness was easier if I knew light wasn’t far.

I used to run up the basement stairs after switching off the light — because who knew what might come out once the light faded away?
That split second between brightness and pitch black felt like a bridge I didn’t want to cross.

This fear isn’t unique to me. Many children are afraid of the dark.
But then, there are others — the lucky ones — who fall asleep in total darkness without a second thought.
Who don’t need nightlights or half-open doors to protect themselves from shadows.
I’m that person now.

But back then, I used to hate sleeping over at their houses.
Their calm made me feel broken or weak — like I was the only one carrying this irrational fear.
So I pretended. I shut my eyes and acted like nothing was wrong,
even as the unfamiliar dark pressed against my body and mind in ways I couldn’t explain.

Looking back, I don’t think I feared the darkness itself —
but what it represented: the unknown. The unseeable. The uncontrollable.

As I got older, I eventually learned to fall asleep in total darkness.
But I didn’t outgrow the fear that lived beneath it —
the fear of uncertainty, of not knowing, of not seeing what might be coming next.

For years, I tried to fight that fear by planning everything.
I built roadmaps for my life, trying to anticipate each decision, each relationship, even each emotion.
I mistook control for safety — and lost things, slowly, piece by piece.

Because control is an illusion.
It feeds anxiety more than it soothes it.
No matter how careful you are, there’s always something you don’t know —
something you don’t even know you don’t know.
The world doesn’t bend to our fear-driven strategies.

So slowly — very slowly — I started letting go.
I stopped trying to carve the entire path ahead.
I started to believe that maybe life unfolds if we let it.
That maybe the unknown isn’t something to defeat, but something to meet.

It was from that place of quiet surrender that the idea of a dark room meditation retreat was born.

Not as an escape or a challenge — but as a deeper experiment:
What happens when we strip away the senses we rely on to make sense of the world?
What do we discover when we can no longer see, or be seen?
What rises to the surface when we stop distracting the mind with form, light, and movement?

I wanted to feel what it truly meant to let go —
not just mentally or emotionally, but sensorially.
To surrender the need to orient myself.
To stop “knowing” where I was, or where I was going.
To give up control of the experience itself.

I wanted to step fully into the unknown —
to let darkness become not a threat, but a teacher.

And so, I said yes to the void. I left everything and everyone behind.
That’s become a habit of mine — leaving things.
I’ve walked away from people, from family, from friends, even from love.
Not from who I did, from the one who loved me at their first place.

There’s nothing left to leave anymore.
So now, I’m leaving writing too.

For now, this is the last note.