Into the Light or the Darkness?

I love the show "So You Think You Can Dance" for many reasons. For starters, I have no rhythm, can't hear a beat, and therefore suck at dancing, so I love watching others do what I cannot. More importantly, I love the way that the combination of music and movement can speak in ways that words cannot. As much as I am a words person, I firmly believe that sometimes there are limits to what words can convey and that sometimes our bodies must do the talking.

I have a long, long list of routines from all the seasons of SYTYCD that I adore, and most of them are contemporary pieces that reach beyond my mind and into my soul. When I saw the piece in the clip above for the first time, the hairs on my arms raised, my stomach twisted in the tell-tale way, and I started to cry. Perhaps part of it is Dee Caspbary's way of explaining the meaning behind the routine. Perhaps some of it is the way the dancers fulfill his vision. Perhaps it is because I so deeply understand the struggle when being pulled between the darkness and the light.


As someone who has struggled with depression for most of her life, I know how difficult it can be to move out of the darkness. Depression has a way of wrapping her tentacles around you and keeping you weighted down to the bottom of the sea, to the part where light has no chance of ever reaching.

It can be so, so scary to venture out from the darkness after you've lived there for so long. As Marko explains in the video, "I want to go towards the light, but I don't know what's under the light." When you've existed in a place where everything is nuanced, where darkness is comfortable because it is known, when you feel punished every time you allow the smallest part of you to tentatively tiptoe into the light, it is so easy to give up even trying. It becomes so much easier to just stay where the light cannot reach because you cannot be hurt there- at least not in ways you do not already know.

I've been lucky in that I've had loved ones (who both do and do not understand depression) who were willing to reach into the pain and the blackness and the hopelessness and the soul crushing weight of depression to try and help me back into the light. Sometimes they have not succeeded. Sometimes I have pulled them into the darkness with me. But sometimes- through their understanding, their patience, their ability to remain in the light while still holding my hand, in my darkness- I have been willing to venture into the light.

Though in this dance routine, the darkness wins, I have been blessed in my life that sometimes, even if only for a moment, the light wins and I am able to experience life on the other side.