It is, in essence, the difference between carrying the torch and being the torch. When we shine light, the darkness doesn’t necessarily disappear. It doesn’t seem to leave—that unspeakable thing that happened to you that reduces you to “a little boy in a big-ass room”—but now it merges with the light. The terrible thing has become bright. Not obliterated, but its own kind of fuel, its own kind of illumination.
