I’ve been rewatching Stranger Things with my daughter these past few weeks so I’ve learned a lot about dark energy. It’s really not anything too new a concept for me. I’ve watched plenty of other shows about similar parallel universe or upside down concepts. What was different this time, was that while I was watching the show, I was also struggling with some dark energy right in my own life.
A few days ago I dumped my boyfriend. I use those words specifically because it’s the first time I did something like that. Relationships have soured, fizzled out until there was nothing left or they have done the leaving. Never, have I ever, flat out left someone when it wasn’t clear cut, when it wasn’t 100% obvious. I used to say that was because I’m that loyal. Now I see that it was because I was afraid.
Dark Energy is a hypothetical form of energy that exerts a negative, repulsive pressure, behaving like the opposite of gravity.
Just like in science fiction, dark energy can take on many forms. In my case, it was in the form of a man who seemed utterly devoted to me. At first it seemed wonderful. He wanted to do all sorts of things for me, take me out, take my family out, mow my lawn, fix things… devotion. He said he loved me within the first week and he said it multiple times a day. He asked my mother if he could call her “mom” and referred to my kids as his son and daughter.
Ok, I know what you are thinking… psycho right? Yes it is obvious now but it was confusing at the time. The way I justified it was that even though he was talking about love too soon, at least he was demonstrating in his actions to back it up. I felt like how could I reject such generosity.
Little by little things got less comfortable. I would catch him staring at me smiling, leering actually like a pervert. I told him it made me uncomfortable but he said he couldn’t stop because he loved looking at me so much.
He was always touching me, rubbing my legs or my arms, even when I was driving. He would randomly kiss me, without warning there would be this face coming at me. Sometimes I’d be in mid sentence or even eating when he would take a kiss. I considered this uncomfortable and told him so.
Whenever I would tell him how I felt he would adjust at first and I’d relax and then he would return to the original behavior. I started feeling off balance and strained to be around him. It was all I could do to tolerate his presence.
This imbalance led to two separate falls, both when he was hanging around me, about 10 days apart. Each fall was dramatic. One landed me in the emergency room. Something was wrong I could tell.
So that leads up to a few days ago where I decided I needed a night to myself. He had been coming over every single day and I needed a break. I said I was meeting a friend for dinner which he was convinced was a date. It was not. He showed up unannounced right before I was going out and then went home, got drunk, and started texting my daughter, yes my daughter, about whether I was on a date.
I didn’t need more reasons. I immediately broke up with him.
Now here is where it gets interesting. At first I feel free. That first night I slept great but when I woke up my back was tight and clenched. I have spent the last few days using ice, heat, yoga, and the pool to release the tension from my back. It’s going but it leaves in waves. The second day it felt like someone had used my sides as a punching bag. I felt a release by my tailbone, corresponding to my root chakra, and today my sacrum feels bruised.
What does all this mean? Well I tend to hold stress in my body and when I feel safe, I release it. In that relationship, I clearly had experienced far more stress than I had realized, so much stress that I had to lock it away in my root chakra (which is the chakra that deals with core safety) and now that I am safe and free, my body is releasing it. There’s a lot to release.
What I had experienced was the dark energy of emotional manipulation, being dazzled by love and generosity in order to trap you, lock you in. Now that I am free, I’m paying close attention to other people’s energy, not just their words or actions, from now on.