It’s been five months since I’ve needed a morning alarm—awakening to light, not sound.
But now I’ve woken up several mornings in darkness, and my body is confused.
What time is it? I wouldn’t have a clue. 5 am and 7 am are now the same under my eyelids.
My night light glows in the corner and I’m very aware of it. It is very easy to be scared of the dark. If you ignore its suffocation, its cold, its void, you are left with very little. There is a nothingness to the darkness, except for what you already know. Trust and a silhouette.
When I’m standing at the top of the stairs, and there’s no sunlight creeping in through the kitchen blinds, I wonder how I’m supposed to descend.
And so I descend very carefully, one foot tentatively after the other. Eventually the sun will rise, but for now it appears to be taking its sweet time, debuting later and later each day.
What havoc that wreaks on someone who wakes up with the sun. I mourn the loss of slow mornings, flooding my room with daylight. Now I wake to inherently groggy mornings that immediately turn frantic, as I keep checking the time, in fear of being late.
While this is miserable, it is tolerable in comparison to the sun’s evening abandonment, as it sets earlier and earlier each day.
I used to walk home at 7:30 pm and watch the blue transition to a cotton candy sky, but streetlights are my guide now. While I must reiterate my fear of the dark, it is also worth mentioning the stress of losing time—the intense pressure and panic that accompany fleeting moments of daylight, in the wake of waning productivity.
In coping with the natural darkness of both morning and night, I have come to the conclusion that the only solution is to romanticize this change in light. While I am not a fan of the dark, I love the cold because it reminds me that I can still feel warm.
A thick sweater serves as my cocoon, and fuzzy socks protect my feet from the chilly morning air. Outside, however, the air is unrelentingly crisp, to match the crunch of leaves under my feet. And it cannot be ignored that snow and Christmas lights are prettier in the dark.
For now, I will reckon with the darkness; the sun will return soon enough.
