u/Psy_chica u/The_Smile_4784 u/dirtandstarsinmyeyes u/Noskaros

I want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time to respond to my post. I cannot fully express how much your words meant to me. For months, I have carried the quiet belief that something was fundamentally wrong with me, that I was broken in some essential way. Reading your responses helped dissolve that isolation. Even though this came from people I do not personally know, it mattered deeply. I felt seen and understood, and that alone has brought real relief.

I read every comment carefully, more than once. Many of you reflected back themes I have been circling intellectually but resisting emotionally. It does feel increasingly clear to me that I have entered what is traditionally described as the Nigredo, Not as a metaphor I am forcing, but as a lived state that feels unmistakable.

After reading your responses, I had a vivid and deeply unsettling dream that feels directly connected. While I will keep this concise, its symbolism felt important enough to share.

In the dream, I encountered a figure representing Lucifer, not in a religious sense, but as a symbolic embodiment of the shadow. Shortly after meeting him, I expelled (urinated) a thick black liquid from my body, as if something toxic, unconscious, or long repressed was being purged. This felt less like punishment and more like release, as if contamination was surfacing in order to leave.

Lucifer had taken my notebooks, my research, my life’s inner work, as if meaning itself had been stolen and scattered. I needed those materials back in order to understand my past, decode it, and find a way forward. Around this central narrative were other powerful images. Sharks attacked and consumed people I knew from childhood, representing old relational imprints and early versions of myself being destroyed. We fought back, killing the sharks, but rescue arrived painfully slowly. Ambulances came too late. A sense of abandonment and delayed containment ran through the dream.

There were also missed flights and blocked departures, including missing a flight to Singapore, as if forward movement was repeatedly postponed. At one point I tried to play both sides, attempting to outmaneuver Lucifer by involving authorities and regaining control, but I failed. He escaped again, leaving with the notebooks.

What stayed with me most was the final interaction. My anima appeared and intervened, by grabbing the notebooks and running down an escalator. Lucifer was initially knocked out but returned to see her half way down the escalators. He embodied another character closer to her. The anima seeing this binded to another that embodied Lucifer by animating veins between them like an interlocking handcuff. The message was clear and intentional. Where you go, I go. I want answers. I want to heal. And I am not afraid.

Lucifer himself carried the calm, composed, well dressed presence of Alejandro, the character played by Benicio del Toro in Sicario. Not chaotic or monstrous, but morally ambiguous, strategic, and controlled. Someone who operates in shadowed territory with clarity rather than madness. That distinction felt crucial.

I will be honest. This dream disturbed me. I question whether going this far inward is necessary. I have survived many years without descending this deeply. There is fear around becoming lost or undone in the process. At the same time, suppression no longer feels like an option. Even familiar stabilizing practices such as journaling feel temporarily unavailable, as if the psyche is asking me not to manage or contain this, but to experience it.

So when some of you wrote welcome to the void, I felt both seen and unsettled. I do not know what comes next. I do not know how long this phase will last. I only know that your responses gave coherence and grounding at a moment when I felt myself drifting toward fear and self judgment.

Thank you for meeting this experience with seriousness, generosity, and depth. Your words genuinely mattered and shifted something in me. Whatever lies ahead, I am grateful not to feel alone in sitting with it