This is a short story I wrote a while back based on my own experiences. We are taught to fear the darkness. That darkness contains monsters that want to take what we have. I was born into a white light. A light that laid out a way to live and act. My feelings were only to be considered when it aligned with the light. Otherwise, those feelings were temptations of darkness and to be shamed. The light was praised as the one true light, all other lights being an incomplete and weaker light. I tried to shape myself into the form the light deemed appropriate. I found it exhausting. Eventually, I created a mask to hold me in that shape, rarely letting what hid underneath out. Sometimes it became too much and something would explode out. Those that birthed me into the light would seek help to try to fix me. Eventually their patience thinned and they settled for forcing compliance. I fell deeper into despair. I could not figure out why I did not fit in the light. I was already filling with darkness for just existing. The light provided explanations. "The darkness seeps in wherever it can, that we are of darkness and only through the light can we be more." No matter how much time I spent in the light, though, the more I felt like less. I thought maybe if I extinguished myself, then I would take the darkness down with me. I tried multiple times but some part of me still persisted, dragging the rest of me with it. Eventually, I realized I could not live in the white light any longer and left. When I left the light, I thought I would lose my sight. Instead, my eyes adjusted and I could see so much more! I let my mask drop and saw that was not darkness within me, but my own beautiful light of various changing colors. Looking around, there were others with their own beautiful lights. I looked back and saw that the light I had left was not a light at all. It was other beings siphoning the light from those in the "light". From the outside, the white "light" had turned sickly. I tried to reach those still in thrall of the "light" but they recoiled from me. I was now part of the "darkness" they were so afraid of. The harder I tried to pull them out, the harder they clinged to the parasitic "light". Some tried to pull me back into the light, convinced they could "save" me. Others were afraid and avoided me where possible. Eventually I gave up. I could not help those that did not realize they were in danger. I've moved on, helping those struggling to find their own inner lights. Fighting parasitic lights where I can, and now I love my inner light and the "darkness" I was originally taught to fear. #exmormon #whiteness #deconstruction