Darkness is coming

Oh, you guys.

We turn the clocks back on Saturday night, and you know what that means.

The days get shorter.

It is dark by 4:30. Even by the time our work day ends, when last period ends at 2:23 – it is clear that the day is nearly over. The world becomes muted. Faded. Quick, and yet too long. Fuzzy. Disjointed. Out of sync. Wrong.

I hate it.

I try – I really do try – to be positive, to at least not let things get to me. Oh, I know. It will pass, we go through this every year, get exercise, use your light box.

I’m not looking for strategies.

Because the truth is – it just is really crappy. And not just for me, but for so many people I know.

I feel the lack of light in my bones. Even on a day when I race home from work to get in a half hour walk in the light, the fact is that it gets dark at 4:30, and then I sit on my couch, and I feel it weighing on me. Not even as a depression. But as a heaviness. A compression. A sluggishness. An I just want to nap every afternoon feeling. A million compensatory strategies do not substitute for that beautiful, natural, rhythm of sunsets not happening until 7:30.

This fall I have spent an enormous amount of time and energy into eliminating the internal darkness within me.

I am so thankful I did it now, as I will be that much lighter when the external darkness comes.

It will still be hard.

I am wired to need light. Not bright shining, glaring sun, but light. Sun.

But. So.

All we can do, really, is wait. Wait the 7 weeks or so until my most favorite day of the year – the Winter Solstice. Where we finally turn toward the light. Where no, the darkness doesn’t end, and the yes, cold permeates our bones, but we see the warm, lit path, sparkling with garlands of fairy lights, and we move towards it, knowing it comes out somewhere beautiful.

Goodbye, my beautiful sun. I hope you enjoy your rest. I will miss you – your true self – desperately, and will cherish every moment, however muted and fake-seeming, that I get of you during the short days. I will hold your radiance inside me, as best I can, and I will make my own light. I will miss you every moment and I will bloom again, as the flowers do, when you finally return.

(image: shockhollywood/pixabay)