My mother always told me there was nothing to be afraid of in the dark.

Maybe she was just too innocent.

We're surrounded by all kinds of darkness;

One just has to have squinted eyes to see it.

I walk out my door, and the neighbor is covered in blood from a robbery,

But what did he do?

A child half a world away dies because of a simple, curable disease?

What did she do?

Innocent citizens are gassed by their own government,

Yet I hear the echoing cries that there's noting to be afraid of in the dark.

As a child, of course I believed this;

Everyone wants to believe her mother.

It wasn't until my clothes were ripped off,

My skin beaten and chapped,

My insides crying out in agony that I could no longer believe her.

Darkness lingered around my entire being so long that I could no longer take it.

Those meaningless, comforting words came like a slap to the face.

"There's nothing to be afraid of in the dark, Lydia."

I rose from the table and marched to my room.

The nights I cried out for God to take this torture only became darker.

My mother didn't want to see it;

Hell, I didn't want to see it.

The "immunity" to the darkness that we had lived under for so long

Broke.

Shattered.

A thousand pieces that could never be put back together.

My mother always told me there was nothing to be afraid of in the dark.

Maybe she just never saw it because it's the same color as the darkness.

-A.