If you have ever watched the TV show Dexter, you know what I mean by a “dark passenger”. To Dexter, his dark passenger is the fact that he has the need to kill people. We all have a dark passenger that resides in us. For some, it is a part of your past that you are ashamed of. For others, it is a behavior that you are less then proud of, that you hide from the outside world. It is something about yourself that you wish didn’t exist; a failed marriage (or two or three), past or present addictions or behaviors that you are afraid to admit are part of who you are. By admitting your dark passenger, the fear is that people will judge you, or see you in a different light of the image that you are trying to portray. That they will love you less, or not at all.

You cannot escape from it. It is part of who you are. If it is part of your past, you cannot change it. If it is part of your present, you cannot deny that it exists.

My dark passengers

Yes. There are more then one. I can honestly tell you that I am not a serial killer, nor was I ever, but I do have some darkness lurking in my past and in my present that I am not proud to admit. Will I admit to them today? No. What I will tell you is that by writing this post, I am beginning to accept that they are part of who I am. The people who are close to me know what they are. I cannot truly be myself by denying they exist. I have spent a large part of my adult life feeling ashamed, but as I get older, and wiser, I am beginning to accept that they are part of who I am. I do not embrace them. I wish that they didn’t exist, but we all have ghosts in our closets, and there comes a time in your life when you have to stop feeling ashamed and accept that they are part of who you are.

Not all is what it appears to be

You wouldn’t be who you are without your past. It as made you the person you are today. We all struggle everyday to accept the things we cannot change. It is hard for me to accept that I am not perfect. If it is something about your present that you can change, then work to try and change it. I wake up every day and say “things are going to be different today”. Some days I succeed and some days I fail. Nobody is perfect. All that matters is that we are doing our best.

So stop beating yourself up. Accept that you are imperfect. The first step is admitting that “the darkness” exists. Once you do that, you can work on accepting  your dark passenger as part of who you are.

“I’m Dexter and I’m not sure what I am. I just know there’s something dark in me and I hide it. I certainly don’t talk about it, but it’s there always, this Dark Passenger. And when he’s driving, I feel alive, half sick with the thrill of complete wrongness. I don’t fight him, I don’t want to. He’s all I’ve got. Nothing else could love me, not even… especially not me. Or is that just a lie the Dark Passenger tells me? Because lately there are these moments when I feel connected to something else… someone. It’s like the mask is slipping and things… people… who never mattered before are suddenly starting to matter. It scares the hell out of me.” — Dexter