Lux Lucis in Obscurum

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. - F Scott Fitzgerald.

Have you ever been there? When every moment you think morning might come faster, that this waiting might be over - and every time you think it you are reminded of the waiting in an inexorably ticking but never moving time-warp.

And you are desperate to leave, to forget. And you claw your way through a brick wall, soot covering the sides, your arms aching and heedless of the thin, sticky tracks of blood down them. Your nails are split and your hair is ragged. Scratch marks on your face and a dryness in your throat and eyes. No tears left. Check - none at all. Just a fear that you know you're ignoring. Hurriedly you put away the demented knowledge.

This night will end.

There is a space between the fear of hope and the fear of hopelessness. If you give up now, you will begin to think about it. And it lies there like an undisposed-of corpse reminding you of a guilt not undertaken. Is this the end of sanity?

You are desperate to forget, and in your desperation you cannot think of anything else.

Until someone... unthinkingly, insensitively, abrasively reminds you, confronts it, smiles at it cluelessly. Idiotically. What do they have on this relentless darkness? They will never know it.

But the tears fall. And in the dark, your watch says it is ten past three.