Wow, Jessica. THANK YOU for this :)

I had to take some time to fully process this but it is SO true for individuals such as us, and, I suspect just from the comments here, many others, too.

Your title here keeps resonating with me: "You Don't Choose the Darkness. The Darkness Chooses You." From my late teens to early mid 20's I was a "goth girl" - black clothing, even for a brief time, black hair, too...all of it, I now realize was an outward response to a myriad of inner responses and traumas that I was struggling to deal with. Thank you for giving voice to this darkness and giving us all a way to embrace it and live with it.