When Light Overcomes Shadow

By Douglas Robbins

I was a monk in many ways, an ascetic living a simple life in upstate New York just outside of the Catskill Mountains. I studied martial arts, meditated, worked at a restaurant, and wrote a lot.

I didn’t want love or friendship. I wanted to be alone.

My mother had died a couple of years earlier. My family had been torn apart, and I was seeking respite from the complexities of life: a break from the demons calling me to join her.

I worked on my first manuscript, Dawn, about young love, cancer, and family dynamics. It had all the makings for commercial success. The story was universal.

It was an homage to my mother, who had lost her battle with cancer after a double mastectomy and brutal napalm for the body chemotherapy. My father was alone now. My childhood home outside NYC was under contract to be sold so we had to move, and the Florida home she picked out was also. We had no choice but to leave our home and neighborhood behind. The idea had been to get her out of the rat race and move closer to the beach, where she could rehabilitate. My father had quit his job at a prominent college to become her nurse. She was skin and bones and would often fall, struggling on her way to the bathroom.

In Florida, night after night, my father sat in front of our swimming pool at the round patio table with a beer and cigarette. She never made it to that beach, but I was on that sand day and night. My soul calling for its comfort.

After a few months, I left and drove my old gray Honda hatchback across America. I abandoned college and everything else to drive for months camping while trying to outrun the heaviness that filled my heart. Movement and nature were my only solace.

Eventually, I returned to upstate New York, where I began training because fighting, that physical realm, was a side of my life I didn’t understand. As a child, I had always been afraid. Perhaps with my mother’s death, I was tired of it. 

Nature became my sanctuary and my best friend. I never had to “be” anything. Never feeling connected to school, consumerism, or religion, I was a man with no solid ground and no future: only the past and present.

So, I wrote, trained, hiked, and meditated. After writing the manuscript for two-plus years, I felt strong enough like a warrior to reenter society. That calling moved me to New York City, the biggest place in the world.

I lived in Spanish Harlem on 110th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. I wanted the Upper West Side but couldn’t afford it. I found a job in the admissions office at a small interior design school. I came to love Spanish Harlem. It was seedy, dirty, and dangerous. But so was I.

I wrote and finished the manuscript. Feeling the boldness of the world within me, I sent it out.

Then crickets chirped, and no doves were released. No sky opened up. No one cared. There were few responses, mostly form letters from agents and publishing houses. One agent returned the manuscript with a sticky note saying, “Not for us.”

I was confused. I had done everything right, and it all turned out wrong.

Though NYC has eight million people, it can be the loneliest place in the world. I thought life had deceived me, forgotten me. I had come all this way only to fail. The admissions job became maddeningly redundant: application after application. I was meant for more. But more did not happen, only less.

Writing was a lie I began telling myself. So, I fell into a spiraling well of depression. I hooked up in the wrong relationships, leading me down the wrong road. Eventually, I left the city a broken man.

I turned off the creative spigot and denied my birthright to pursue that higher calling. But how could I believe it? In my apartment, I stood and shouted at God. I called him names and felt betrayed. “You took my mother away, you fuck, now this? What a lie this life is.”

I rejected the voices speaking about writing, characters, and how to make the story better. I severed my connection to the sacred. Like bacon fat in a pan, I could see the grease in my brain where damages were caused by these actions and thoughts, denying myself.

If you reject the one thing you are and cast it away, you are left with a million choices: lawyer, painter, landscaper, and they are all wrong. My dark period came with drugs, drinking, and sorrow. I remember the Warren Zevon song, “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.”

I had moved to NYC with big dreams and left with a broken heart. But it wasn’t the dream that failed me; I realized it was my thoughts, my belief system. Even as a child, I didn’t know how to ask for help, so I walked away from things and people I loved. Eventually, I headed back north to the Catskills and my sanctuary to lick these gaping wounds, learn, and hopefully heal.

After a couple years of saying “No” to the voices in my head, with the gentle promptings of the universe to sit and write, I began again. Now the writing was angry, contemptuous, purging the demons that my pen held within it. I had shut the writing spigot off. But if you lose something and it comes back to you, it must be yours.

Dawn was no longer in my heart and when I came back to write, she was left behind. The narrative arc needed work. Eventually, I wrote my first published novel, The Reluctant Human, a searing indictment of a corrupted mind, a world of materialism, and the longing to live a meaningful life against the backdrop of a world choked by consumerism and sellouts.

I partied to lift myself up from the depression I found myself in. Partying was a replacement for the emptiness I felt. It was the fourth leg of a table, to help me stand and find some laughter and hope, to find some ease. But the next day I’d be empty again. Partying gave me a sense of belonging, but it didn’t help me heal.

I was between jobs and apartments when I randomly met a woman while playing Words with Friends online. After a few games, we got to know each other a little, and she told me about a woman named Jennifer who could help market my book.

The first day I spoke with Jennifer, we talked for thirteen hours. She had three kids and was twice divorced. The last guy was abusive, partied behind her back, lied, and cheated. She had to flee with the kids to get away from him.

I’ve found that in revealing your humanness and vulnerabilities to me, I care more. Jennifer lit me up.

Around two in the morning that first night during our marathon conversation, I said, “Well, we’ve covered everything from sex to politics to religion, the only question left for me to ask is, “Will you marry me?” 

Without hesitation she said, “Hell yes,” with what I could hear was a smile on her face. Incorrectly, she had thought she was no longer lovable with her history. I felt just the opposite about her.

We started spending a lot of time together and she revealed a fear of losing me but found the strength to say, because of her kids she can’t be with a guy who parties. She can’t trust that, not after the last one. 

I wanted to hold onto my faithful crutch and argued that I wasn’t like him. In truth, deep down I knew it was slowly killing me.

My marriage proposal wasn’t exactly in jest. For the next year, I proposed to her every day. Luckily, she always said yes.

Now I needed her to say it one more time. I had the ring in my pocket. It was my birthday, and we were on the New Jersey shore just a few feet from the water’s edge with beautiful skies and lobsters rolls at the ready. 

Jen sat while the little one, who was four at the time, played with her toys, making shapes out of the sand with her plastic molded cutouts. 

I stood in front of them with my back to the water while Jen squinted up at me.

A few feet over I saw something that sparkled and reflected the sun, catching my attention. I looked closer and noticed it was a full bag of weed sitting there tucked within some seaweed. 

I could lie and cheat like he had, betray her and my promises to stop. I could have ignored it or come back for it later. I could have pocketed the bag and hid it from her.

But I knew this was a test. 

I pointed the bag out. She frowned. I went over and kicked sand on top of it to hide it out of sight, and quite literally, to bury it.

I had to choose this instant family, just add water, or stay stuck on drugs, drinking, and escape.

That’s what she was also asking of me, to stop escaping and deal with my stuff. After what she’d been through, she couldn’t do both. She had to protect her children and what was left of her. 

After a moment, I said, “Okay, that’s done for.” And I stepped back in front of her. “You’ve said yes every day. And for my birthday gift, I was hoping you would say yes one more time.” I got down on my knee and pulled out the box with the ring in it and asked her while extending my hand, “Will you marry me?” 

After a pause and shock, she said, “I knew you’d ask, but I didn’t expect it on your birthday. Hell yes, I’ll marry you! Sweetie,” she said to her little girl who looked up, “Dougie just proposed. We’re gonna be a family again.” Jen looked up at me and said, “She needs you as her daddy.”

Little Bit ran over with a big smile, and we all hugged. I needed her too: more than I ever knew.

I fell in love with all the kids and eventually adopted the little one. I could have either played the victim role or stand up, be a man, and learn from my shortcomings. 

Being around the youngest one, who is now 14, taught me and still teaches me more about love than I could ever teach her.

Our anniversary is today and every day I am thankful for the path I chose.

Jen saved me from myself. Love saved us both.

My sixth book, Baseball Dreams and Bikers just came out. I’ve learned that you only fail if you stop trying, learning, and moving forward. And that love is always worth moving forward for.

Douglas Robbins discovered his passion for writing at a young age when a poetry assignment unearthed his connection to words. Though he pursued other careers, Robbins continued writing, ultimately publishing his sci-fi novel "Narican" in 2019. This marked the start of an epic sci-fi series, before he released the poignant "Love in a Dying Town" in 2021. In 2023, Robbins delighted readers again with "Baseball Dreams" and "Bikers," an anthology exploring familial bonds and the resilience of dreams. Through diverse genres and imagination, Robbins captivates readers, weaving narratives that leave a profound impact. Find out more at https://douglasrobbinsauthor.com