I’ve started a new tradition.
It’s not something I intended to do, nor something that I take particular pride in, but nonetheless, it’s something that I’ve started to do every night, and something that I find a strange amount of comfort and pleasure in, so it’s not as if I can pretend that this is an entirely random happenstance, nor something that I do unthinkingly. It does, however, require a little bit of backstory.
There are two lights in the bathroom close to where I sleep; one of those lights has a switch by the door, the second by the mirror on the far wall of the room. It’s a relatively large bathroom, so there’s some space between the two switches, and in theory, they illuminate different parts of the room. The problem is, the switch by the door is for a light that doesn’t really work anymore; there’s a loose connection, so the light flickers for a few seconds like something out of a horror movie before going dark.
This means that the only working light has its switch inside the room, which means that, at night, I walk into a room that is almost entirely pitch black before putting the light on. And that’s my new tradition.
Well, no; not entirely. My new tradition is reaching out into the darkness to find the switch in the light, and realizing that, no matter what, the wall is always further away than I think it is, so that I’m reaching tentatively into thin air for a few seconds, edging forward and hoping to find what I’m looking for. That’s it; that’s the thing I find myself taking an unexpected pleasure in.
What’s strange is the amount of enjoyment I take in reaching out into darkness each night, and finding nothing there. I don’t know why, but every single night, I find it a thrilling and comforting experience. Each night, as I reach out to find nothing, and then edge forward, I internally joke that I’m living out a metaphor for something that I haven’t identified yet.