Inviting Gmork to the table
Taking responsibility for our lives = relinquishing all the old payoffs
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“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.”
–Carl Jung
Last month I participated in a “personal growth” retreat, a week-long experience that impacted me in ways I’m still slowly grokking.
Here is the promise of the experience:
“The Process will help you become conscious of and disconnected from negative patterns of thought and behaviors on an emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual level in order to make significant positive changes in your life. You will learn to remove habitual ways of thinking and behaving, align with your authentic self, and respond to situations in your life from a place of conscious choice.”
A mouthful! (Not to mention, *quite* the tall order).
I won’t go into too much detail, because who knows, some of you might attend one day, and part of the thrill and magic of the experience was the not knowing what was coming from one day, or even one hour, to the next. What I will share is that for the first thirty-six hours, I had a real hard time taking off my “coaching hat.” Try as I might to be curious and open, and to step into a beginner’s mindset, I couldn’t help but filter all the exercises and information through my specific lens—the lens of a seeker, who not only is in the business of transformation, but has also been borderline obsessed with her own “personal growth” since the beginning of time.
What if this process works for everyone but ME? What if I don’t get my money’s worth?
Luckily, I got over my internalized exceptionalism (did I just coin a term?) and was sincerely able to drop into the experience, which continues to reverberate in my entire system.
This is all boring backstory for what I actually want to tell you, which is about the worth-the-price-of-admission-impact one exercise in particular had for me. At some point in the week (time got real bendy and amorphous), we were guided through an experience that had us face what was referred to as our “Dark Side.”
The moment this concept was introduced, my entire body went cold. The idea of an inner “dark side” required no explanation for someone like me, and the reason it required no explanation was because it wasn’t conceptual at all, but a lived experience I was beholden to for many many years of my life. For a long time, I was ruled by a thing inside me that, when I’d close my eyes and tap in, revealed itself to be a dark mass at the core of my being that threatened to suck me in. A void. A black hole. A chasm with no bottom. An absence of light. A split.
I’m guessing that if you’re into this newsletter, there’s a decent chance you know what I mean.
Part of the exercise was to create an artistic rendering of our Dark Side. I grabbed a few markers, began sketching on a large piece of poster board. After some angry scribbling, I leaned back to take in what I’d drawn and was surprised not at all to see Gmork, the wolf-like antagonist from The Neverending Story, staring back at me.
Growing up, The Neverending Story was my favorite movie, despite the singular terror Gmork inspired. For much of my childhood, he visited me in recurring nightmares, chasing me through dark landscapes, threatening to eat my entire family, ever at my heels. And it is the image of Gmork, a servant of The Nothing—the powerful, um, void that threatens to destroy all of Fantasia—who I finally got to turn and face.
Gmork wasn’t a surprise. The surprise came about halfway through the experience. There I was, one arm lifted overhead, about to crash down and tear through my dark side’s awful face, on the cusp of ridding myself of it for good, when a voice came through, paralyzing me:
What if you don’t want to let this part of you go?
*
Here’s the bizarre truth: the void wasn’t only terrifying. It was also alluring. You see, I wanted to give over. I sought out my own erasure and annihilation. I wanted to throw myself into the abyss. I’d spend daylight hours doing everything I could to ignore its gravitational pull. Then, at night—not every night, but oh, were there nights—I’d flirt with the edge, batting my lashes, blowing circles of smoke in its direction, before willfully throwing myself in. There was something sexy about the split, the way I could be bright and sunny and “normal” all day, and then transform myself into a shapeshifting, shit talking, anything-could-happen vampire by night.
Or so I told myself.
There’s a payoff to this story. To staying “split.” To believing that I am intrinsically fucked. That there is something wrong inside me that separates me from my fellow, more “normal” humans. The payoff is that inside of this narrative, very little is required of me. Giving over is safe, in the sense that as long as I’m beholden to my most basic instincts, I never have to do the real work of turning and facing my life. Of taking total responsibility, of doing the work required to become a whole person, and not a fragmented, small, sad shell of who I might otherwise become.
It’s also an immature story, in its black-and-white simplicity. Facing my inner Gmork is a necessary part of the story, a milestone, a turning point, a vital threshold. But it’s only the beginning. It’s Act I.
Ok here’s a preview of Act II:
Nothing about me needs to be banished, or eradicated. The beginning of Act II is the realization that I don’t have to let my Gmork go.
I simply have to invite him to the table.
I am responsible for this part of myself. I am response-able. Releasing all payoffs, I claim agency over every part. And truly, when I am in conversation with my dark—when we are sitting around the table sharing coffee and frozen pizza, instead of playing a constant (and exhausting) game of cat-and-mouse—I am no longer at its mercy. So far, the experience is one of emptiness, and not the grotesque emptiness of the void, but a satisfied one, a sense of calm that indicates that the perpetual pendulum might have finally come to rest in a softer center.
Inside of this conversation, I see that my dark parts grant me some of the things I love most about myself and my experience of being human. The dark side is the subterranean landscape of sex, and intimacy; of creativity and artistry. It is the Fool, turning convention on its head. It is playing with social norms and expectations. It is mysterious, alive, and wily. It is self-expression and whatever the hell is the opposite of shame.
So I’ll surrender, sure. But I’m no longer afraid of this fight. Inside of this strange new emptiness, I am more free than ever. So I’m letting the darkness in, monsters in full technicolor. Come for me. I dare you.
From the archives ~ this time last year:
⭐️Announcement and Celebration!
⭐️Unexpected Joy and Incidental Recommendations
SELF MADE is a newsletter for fellow 🌺late bloomers🌺 with a focus on recovery, creativity and community. It's written by me, Dani, a writer, coach, and recovery advocate in San Francisco, CA.
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Gmork! 😂🧡