New symptom for me: this early darkness is really freaking me out this year.

I like night. I like night much better than I like day, really. I have never been able to think until after dark. I don't know exactly why that is, other than the placative statement, "I'm not a morning person, I'm a night person," which doesn't say anything at all. People take it as an excuse, even if it is an explanation¹ for certain behaviors, and they ignore the larger issue since "not a morning person" equates with "freak."

Anyway, this total darkness before I leave work thing is actually bothering me now. It's even more disturbing since I like darkness. I like the stillness, the quiet. At night I can be inconspicuous. In the dark I can focus, become that infinitely hot and dense dot.

I always feel like an actor around people. I have a compulsion to fill time and space, to become a larger version of myself, to perform the role of me. I don't know why this is, because it doesn't jive at all with my self image. I'm very comfortable with who I am, and I'm not at all insecure, but only when I'm in control of the room. If I have to live up to somebody else's expectations, I flail, waiting for some sign that I'm doing it right. If I'm in charge, if I'm the one setting my expectations, this does not happen. The shift between these two states is not conscious for me, but people who've only seen me in the one are always shocked (sometimes moved) when they see the other.

So the night is my time. I'm the one asking me to do things, and I know what I want.

I've never been able to relate to people with SAD, because longer nights have always had a positive effect on me. I understand SAD, I just don't relate to it. But now it seems the darkness is affecting me negatively, and that's new, strange, and disturbing.

I suspect it may be that I can't reconcile the darkness, which is my time, with work, which isn't. I think the unsettling factor is that work is intruding on my personal time and space. I look out the window and see the cue that I'm supposed to be doing me things, having me thoughts, and instead I'm still in a cube staring at a computer, and I still have an hour commute before I can actually have that me time I need.

I need my time, my darkness. I need to think.

 

 

 

 

1) If I'm late for something which I feel deserved my promptness and I didn't manage to live up to that expectation, I feel compelled to explain why it is I failed. People hear this as an excuse -- that I'm blaming my lateness on the thing -- instead of an explanation, which to me is backstory without the attribution of blame. If I fuck up I'll take the heat, even if I reflexively think you should hear why I did it.

(2 nov)