I See A Darkness
How the dark helped me find a part of myself I thought I'd lost.
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Stretching as far back as my memory goes, and it goes pretty far, I have loved darkness. It’s calmed me. Electrified me. Inspired me. Made my body sparkle with anticipation and delight. Opened my mind way the fuck up.
Everything feels possible in the dark – even the wildest, most far-fetched, most hopeful, most needed, most unlikely-to-occur of my dreams. I can taste them. It’s as if they are already with me, in me; they are me. I’m not imagining this reality. Rather I’m accessing parts of myself that are otherwise kept from me by the constant distractions and demands of light.
As a child, I was never afraid of the dark. I cherished being alone in my bedroom, crammed into my single bed snuggled round by every stuffed animal I owned, which were myriad, and my living, purring, warm-bellied kitties. I can still remember how that was safest time of the day for me; my senses could recover from the world.
And how I loved Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve! The church darkened to candlelight, the priest swinging the thurible of incense, and afterwards the party at the Hubbards: snowdrifts sparkling in the moonlight, stars so bright, so present. I felt alive and loved. A piece of all that is.
My teens were passed nestled in my darkened bedroom, swallowing music through my headphones, the red glow of the amp light, until way too late. Fifteen or sixteen, I was out at parties and soon enough Detroit clubs – stumbling into the parking lot at two in the morning, the green flash of streetlights against the vast darkened sky soaking into me, drenching my bones. I recognized it as home.
Not that I didn’t love the daytime. I did! The sun! The squirrels whizzing from tree to tree! Bike rides and lying in hammocks watching the clouds drift by and mischief with friends. Vacations on warm Up North lakes and picnic lunches and skiing and dog walks and reading without electricity.
But the darkness awakened a part of me that didn’t exist in the sun.
At nineteen, in ‘81, I moved to the Lower East Side. Manhattan was wild then. We were so young and roamed so freely. No cell phones to tether or corral us. We felt indomitable. Feral. And in many ways, we were. We worked day jobs, most of them with late starts, but nights were our glory. We headed out to the clubs around midnight and slunk home with the sunrise. This is unfathomable to me now, but then it was easy. The streetlights like halos, blessing us.
Even as I grew older and left behind the clubs, I ate all my dinners out—never before seven in New York City, at the earliest. Or I was at shows or art openings or friends’ apartments—walking home in the dark, or in the winter months walking to and from in the cold early night. I loved it and I felt myself, to the bone. Grounded and bountiful with curiosity and courage and a breathless wonder. I took that power for granted. Something that would always be with me. Because how could it not be? The sun rises. The sun sets. Darkness descends.
Once home, my favorite time to write was night; I’d shut off my lights – out the window lay a perfect view of the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building. The city sounds—the drone of traffic, playful shouts, angry shouts, dogs barking, fire trucks, horns, mystery sounds—lofted up and anointed me. And, oh, the blackout of 2003! I was in my glory in the pitch cocoon of the island nestled between her rivers. I know for many it was a difficult time and it’s not my intention to discount that, but for me, it was electric.
And then, after twenty-five years, I left my beloved city and moved to Michigan to be closer to my aging parents. Soon after, in the aftermath of head and brain injury, my health collapsed. I’d made no friends yet and had nowhere to go, and even if I had either, I was too sick to leave my home. And without realizing it was happening, I lost my connection to the night.
For one thing, I stopped sleeping. My nervous and endocrine systems were severely impacted from the blow to my head, and once a champion sleeper, in fact, I probably slept too hard, I was suddenly staying awake for days on end or, at best, sleeping two or three hours a night. Darkness began to terrify me. The thought of climbing the stairs to my bed, my body jangly with exhaustion, and lying there hour after hour, my heart racing, the vertigo agitated by the slightest movement, and too much more to list, sent my anxiety through the roof. Once my dearest friend, my spark, my ally, nighttime became my foe.
Over many, many years, my sleep improved, but I had formed rituals that had me inside by nightfall to counter the sleep trauma that had developed deep in my cells. While I had made a few friends, it was rare indeed that we went out for dinner or a show or to each other’s homes. I no longer felt in kinship with the night. Rather I felt that I needed to keep wrestling it under my control.
On the first New Year’s Eve I ventured out, after seven or eight years of health challenges kept me home, I walked to a acquaintance’s house three blocks away and felt my heart pound – not with excitement but fear. I, who had once owned the streets of New York (or at least in mind!), was afraid of my quiet, residential neighborhood in the dark.
Most nights, I would lie in my bed and in between the sleep I was now managing, I would hear the distant train and dream of when I’d be able to travel again. In the warm months, the songs of the crickets would seep through my window, and over time I felt a small, new relationship awakening. I discovered if I sat in my back garden before bed, in the pitch black, with my kitties and eventually my dog, immersed in the chorus of crickets, my nervous system would calm. I also made a wonderful friend who was an astronomer and taught me about the sky. But my relationship to the darkness remained strained.
This year, Michigan is having a mild winter. In a typical Michigan winter, I’ll walk Delilah before it grows dark because the sidewalks are usually covered in ice and it’s often in the single digits if not below zero. But this year, until recent weeks, we barely had winter at all let alone ice and the temperatures were practically balmy.
At first, D and I began our walks in the light and headed home in the dusk – and I felt the power of darkness crawl up my spine and return to me. It surprised me. Until it once more shrouded me, I’d forgotten the passion, confidence, certainty, hope, mischief, adventure, dreams, and deep vision. I found myself longing for that part of the day, willing the hours to pass, the way I longed for dinner with a treasured friend or for a vacation to start. And soon enough, rather than walking from light into dusk, Delilah and I set out directly into the darkness, walking an hour or more, and, I know no other words, I found myself again.
Since the injury, a part of me is always searching for the Jane that was. More so as I grow older and further from her. This loss of pre-injury Jane is one of the greatest sorrows of my life. I’ve grown to like her so much, to understand her more deeply than I did at the time, to appreciate her tenacity, her drive, her endless desire to help others, especially animals, and her vulnerability, her playfulness and earnestness, the weight she carried. Her hope in the world and in herself. Her astonishment at the abundance of the world and her certainty that she belongs in it.
And there, in darkness, she was.
Whilst I’m writing about literal darkness and this song is about figurative darkness, it’s one of my favorite Johnny Cash covers (Will Oldham aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy wrote the song and provides backup vocals) and it’s nearly impossible for me to think of any form of darkness without this song flooding into my head, and Johnny Cash is one of my favorite ever singers, so I figured I’d share it! Enjoy!
After my Learning To Love Myself essay, a lot of you reached out about the mention of how walking my neighbor’s dog helped me heal. I realize now it would have made more sense to link the essay I wrote about that rather than the one I did, so I will link it here. Enjoy!
Upcoming interviews with the visionary Lidia Yuknavitch on her sublime new book Reading the Waves and the wise-hearted Martha Beck on her groundbreaking book Beyond Anxiety. With all that is happening in the world we need their wisdom! I’m excited to share it with you!
This is so beautiful, Jane
I write in darkness—3:30AM—I light a candle and write longhand, later transfer to computer as the first edit. My debut novel was written entirely in the dark the first draft. Serendipity 🥰