The darkness of life is so much like the darkness of the day night cycle.
For each creature that turns in, hunkers down and switches off another creature stirs, beginning its own day in the darkness. I'm not talking evil creatures, spirits and entities, simply animals. Day animals, night animals.
Those nocturnal creatures have the same requirements as their counterparts, food, water, sex and toilet activities. They are killed in the same ways. They sleep in the same positions. They have bones of the same material and blood of the same colour. Living and co-operating at different times of the day.
Where am I going with this? Take the analogy; The Darkness of Life. We are born in the light (figuratively speaking) pure and without the emotional pains of life. We grow up, trusting, loving, caring, listening, learning, watching, waiting. Then the darkness falls. A deep-black, velvet shroud engulfing us in our first emotional pain.
Only in darkness. We become another creature, slowly. Our nocturnal self rising from the undergrowth, stalking in the shadow of our pains, looking for goodness and chasing it away, destroying all chances of happiness, removing all traces of pleasure. A creature who lives in the night because they chose too, the blackness is much more bearable than the twilight, the between times, the "everything is falling down around me" moments, hours, days, months, years.
This creature seeks out other nocturns, to dwell with, to share stories of pain, to remind themselves that they're better off this way, alone, dealing with old hurts and angers, licking now healed wounds - possibly having a good chew to open them back up again.
Many of us hate the creature we become, and sometimes with good reason, some deal with violence and irrational anger, some deal with addictions and loss, others simply wallow, dwell and revisit agonies. Maybe though, we should look again.
Look at the bat. Blinded by genetics, he uses a kind of sonar to view the world. Many of us can barely walk straight in the day time, bats FLY exactly where they want to be, in the dark, with little or no real sight. They get to what they want, and home again without complaint.
Foxes, wolves, excellent vision, excellent smell, excellent hunting skills and intelligence.
Hedgehogs, slow moving, ambling and vulnerable, but with defenses almost impenetrable to all natural predators..
Owls, perfect sight, the silent hunter, seeking and taking his prey from under your nose without you seeing it coming. Majestic, incredible birds, and he can turn his head at angles that bring us tears to imagine.
A myriad of creatures, specialised skills and natural traits, developed over countless years to perfect their existance in the darkness. A darkness, without which, they would die.
Maybe, some of us are the same way. We cannot exist in the day time for we have evolved in ways that only work in the darkness. We need the darkness to survive and live.
Maybe life never returns you to the light, because it would mean the end of you?
Maybe.
Today, I'm proud to be a nocturn.