Cav's Place

I remember a time, when I was little and living with my grandparents, when I used to go in a room, alone, late in the evening, and just sit there in the dark. It was particularly nice to do it on a late summer evening, when the temperature had cooled just enough to be pleasant and they were all still outside, the windows left wide open and the sound of wind and crickets filling my ears. But I did it often at other times at well and it scared them, especially when they happened to walk into the room I was in and notice my shape in the dark, or sometimes literally stumble upon me.
I wasn’t doing anything but sitting and letting my mind drift to wherever it wanted to go, but those moments were the best from that entire period of my life. Those were my moments, when I could break away from everyone else, and they have always been. Night, darkness, solitude, a clearly delimited space and no sounds but those Nature creates. I have always enjoyed these things, though I did find one person next to whom I felt much better at any moment than I ever did being alone at night… And then I lost her. But, unless this is the first entry you read and you know nothing else of me either, you know of that already. I have talked and written a lot about it and will certainly do so again, but not tonight. I won’t write about how confining the creature’s constant presence in this house and the fact that she goes to bed so late as well feel, or about all the noise I now have to put up with. No, tonight I want to write about darkness, and how I’m missing it since I got back here.

I hate light. I hate days, sunshine, summer… They wear me down, disrupt my thoughts, don’t let me be myself even when I am alone… The winter solstice has always been a time of sadness for me, because the nights start to get shorter. It was certainly one of the reasons I could never enjoy Christmas, though only one of many. There was even a time, while I was living with her, when I completely gave up on what had been my regular schedule on most nights for several years, no longer going to bed around 4 AM, but around 8 AM. That meant I woke up around 4 or 5 PM and, since the days were short and nights were long right at that time, avoided pretty much the entire day. Many might find it weird, but for me it was a nice feeling.
It’s not only that there’s far less human activity and noise at night, though of course that also plays a great part, but darkness itself makes me feel better. My thoughts are far clearer, I’m more at ease, more attuned to my surroundings… In darkness, not only can I really be myself when alone, but there’s also a greater chance of managing to say and do exactly what I mean when I’m with someone else.

But it’s not just the light of day, artificial light has nearly the same effect. I don’t keep lights on unless I absolutely need to, so usually the only light source in my room is the computer monitor. Bad for my eyes, I know, but light stresses me out. And artificial light is precisely my problem now, since I got here.
There are streetlights in place behind the building I’m currently living in. The orange kind, used for parks and alleys, so not as bad as the cold white used throughout the city, but as long as it’s a light it’s bad enough. I’m on the first floor (second for Americans) and, while none of them are directly in front of my window, one is very close to it and at just the wrong height. That means I have had almost no darkness in 15 months. The blinds are thin, can’t block it out, so my room always glows orange.
A few days ago, when dad was gone for the night, I went to the living room and noticed a blanket hung to dry, blocking out the light that would otherwise enter his room. I sat on the couch and… Nothing, just sat there for a while. Not dark enough, the blanket provided only partial cover, but better than I’d seen in a long time. When I was living with her I would sometimes go to her brother’s old room at night and walk around in the dark for a while. I didn’t need to do it as long as things were fine between us, but I still enjoyed it. Now I need it and can’t have it…

But that’s not all there is to it. If the lights weren’t enough, the view out my window consists of tall buildings blocking out everything else, not to mention adding lights of their own. When I was living with her it was on the sixth (seventh) floor, with no other tall enough buildings near enough to block the view. Way above streetlights, and actually there weren’t any if you looked straight down, on the alley that connected the building entrance to the street, either. You could see far into the city, but that isn’t what bothers me most about this.
I remember looking up at the stars on a perfectly dark sky when I was little. I remember being able to at least make out some of them before I left here to go live with her, in the patch of sky visible above the buildings, before these lights came to be. While there, though not as well as I could when I was at my grandparents’ when I was little, I could once again see pretty clearly when looking up, watch the stars and the moon on the night’s sky. Now, after 15 months since I got thrown back, I’m yet to see a single star… And I doubt I ever will…