Darkness In, Darkness Out

Once There Was Light And Then It Was Gone

The only thing extra you get is darkness.

Have you felt those first stirrings of the impending Christmas season yet? Up until now it was easy enough to pretend that we weren’t hurtling toward the holidays, but with Halloween finally over and baseball finished for the year there’s no way to fool yourself about it anymore. Soon enough you will be walking around and wanting to die while all about you is music and light, brightness and bells. The songs will remind you of seasons long ago when you were still filled with hope and happiness and then they will shift to serve as markers of how lonely and broken you are today. Every Christmas brings you one year closer to death, but it also takes you one year further away from when you last loved life. They can string a million sparkling bulbs on every city street and they will never shine strongly enough to lighten the darkness you carry around with you day and night.

Soon there will be even more darkness to match your mood as you trudge home each empty evening with your heavy head and sorry soul: Daylight Saving Time ends at 2 A.M. this Sunday. You’ll get an extra hour of sleep but that will wear off in a week and, really, you just want to sleep forever now: an extra hour is yet another cruel joke at your expense, like everything else in life. Instead it will be dark and cold and everyone around you will be full of a joy you can’t fake anymore, a joy that hurts your heart even to remember. Usually this is where I tell you not to forget to change your clocks, but they do that on their own these days. They do it to take the little light you have left away from you.