Sleepless Nights 75 - The Light.

            I remember the light.

            Perhaps that is the reason that I am now an occupant of the darkness. The light. The overwhelming gladness, the elation, the sweetness of it all, the feeling that washes away all pain, all sadness, and all the darkness. The light. It's hard to believe it, harder still to grasp the concept of it. It is there, though. And I used to have it so close to me, enveloping my body and the curious thing about light is how it seems to spread.

            But that moment is long gone. Darkness is now my companion. Why? Oh, that's a difficult question there. In life, there are two types of people. Oh, cliché, I know but the truth often follows a pattern. So; two types of people. On one side you have the ones that are content with everything they have. They receive a wrapped gift and even when they do not know the contents of it, they are glad. They rejoice and they are thankful, some might give the package a bit of a shake but at the end of it, they are happy. It is the thought that counts, as they so virtuously say. On the other hand though, there exists a minority. This group of people will receive the same gift; with the same wrapping and the same decorative ribbon and they will look at you with a smile and they will ask: 'What is it?'. They offend a great many people with this, no doubt but that is what makes them special. The insatiable curiosity, the craving for the absolute truth, the desire to solve the mystery, the obsession over the unknown... Many try to suppress this trait of theirs, attributing it to the something impolite and uncouth and they are wrong. Absolutely, definitely, verily, sincerely wrong. Still, many succeed and that vigour is lost, they proceed to being like everybody else; the majority. Happy. Joyous. Ignorant. Blissfully ignorant.

            I must stop myself before I lose sight of my objective. That is the problem with light. It's delicious, yes. Fantastically scrumptious. I liken it to being enveloped in a lovers embrace but then for us who represent the aforementioned minority, there will always be the same question that arises while we brush our teeth or when we ponder upon a question in a conversation.

            'What is on the other side?'

            And once we ask ourselves that question, we find ourselves doomed. Slowly we fall into a spiral descend into utter madness, the question becomes an itch that we cannot scratch, a thorn we cannot remove, an invisible splinter in our existence. We can ignore it but the pain of not knowing will grow into a monster; sapping away at our joy and our happiness until at last, we explode in rage and we ask it: 'What do you want from me?!'.

            And it will answer: 'I want you to find out'.

            And we do. Because deep inside, we cannot resist the urge. It is our nature, the definition of our meagre existence, our drive, the spurs that dig deep into our flanks. Being in the light forces us to question what does it feel like to be in utter darkness. And I, not known to resist, cut the safety lines, pulled off my oxygen mask and I leapt right into the abyss without an inkling of what lies before me.

            I find myself after all these years, beaten, bruised, scarred, intoxicated, torn and patched, and I only ask: Is it worth it? Is it worth giving up the light just to find out what lies beneath and beyond? To which I can honestly scream out 'Yes'. It is worth it. It is so fucking worth it. Not because it is fun. Not because it is different. Not because it makes me a rebel. No. It is worth it because I have gone to places many have not. It is worth it because the pain that I have experienced, the scars that I now bear... All of them are testaments to how great this life is. Being in the darkness gives me something that I will not trade for my own life. That is knowledge. I know. I can now see things that would have been invisible to me before. When you are in the darkness, you can recognise it and you can see it. No matter how much light floods in and no matter how blinded you are by that light, you can see the darkness. You know what it is capable of.

            For the ones who have lived in light for all of their time here on this great and glorious earth, an encounter with darkness will rob them of their senses. They will walk around blind, deaf, mute and they lose their touch and they get frightened. As their hearts shrink in fear, they lose their grasp upon the light, they forget its loving embrace and they memory dims. But they are used to having it fill them up and they need it, addicted and dependant, they become delirious and mad. So they resort to filling themselves up with whatever that is closest; the dark. They consume it, flooding themselves with it, choking and spluttering on the essence but they forget that darkness is not something to be trifled with.

            They fall. Fast. Rock bottom, the lowest of the low, so deep that there is only a sliver of hope of getting out in one piece.

            What about me, though? Wilfully forsaking the light for a stroll in the dark? No, that sounds far too noble. The darkness was there and I was curious. That's all. What about me?

            I don't know. Satisfied? Not exactly. Regretful? Not quite. Indifferent? Well, it's a bit of a conundrum, isn't it? I will tell you this. The light... Is beautiful. You cannot appreciate the beauty and magnificence of light unless you have been in darkness. It is impossible. It is unbelievably... Bright. Warm. An entity whose sole purpose is to care for you. We do not deserve it. We take it for granted; having lived in it for all of our lives when we don't realise the extent of its greatness. But even so, the darkness, the often misunderstood darkness... It's there for a reason. It is there for us to understand. Imagine the agony of being an object subjected to hatred, anger, disgust, ridicule and everything else negative. Imagine existing for something so much greater, so much nobler, so much more and being misunderstood instead. Imagine that.

           But we cannot. Being mortal means being subjected to stupidity and segregation and superiority. We cannot look pass the fact that we are all... Insignificant. We're on a tiny planet, dependant upon a tiny sun and yet we live as if we're the celestial beings themselves. Hating everybody that looks, believes and thinks differently. We have fools on thrones of gold and sages begging on the streets. We have governing bodies for almost everything but we do not have anything governing them. And for good reason too because we're fucking humans and nowadays, we are all corrupted. We are all hypocrites. It has become the great way of life. It is a miracle that all of us haven't slit our wrists and shot ourselves in the head.