On a Dark Night

It’s a dark night, the darkest of the year.

Truth be told, it has been pretty dark for me for some time.

This year started out terribly and got worse. Things have improved a great deal in the past few months, but my mind has responded to the reduction in pressure by breaking. My anxiety and OCD are the worst they’ve been in years. It’s very hard to be having your worst mental health, over Christmas. No one can get me in to see them right away for a prescription. And now with the car being broken down I can’t get to the office anyway. Yes, I know that 988 and emergency rooms exist. I’m not at that point yet. I’m just suffering.

While I wait to get better help I use the techniques my friend the social worker taught me, and some I made up for myself. I removed financial apps from my phone and let Michael handle them, so I won’t obsess over money. I get up from the internet and force myself to clean or take a long bath so I won’t panic-google possibilities I can’t change. I picture a great big red stop sign between my eyes and the thoughts. I talk about the thoughts and name them as mere thoughts, to get them outside of me.

“I am having a thought. I NOTICE that I am having a thought. It’s normal to have these thoughts, but having them doesn’t make them come true.” 

There’s a storm coming in on Thursday night. It’ll rain all day Thursday, and then the rain will turn to glare ice. The ice is going to be so cold that the salt trucks won’t be able to melt it. We might not even get to Mass on Christmas at this rate.

The Lost Girl’s uncle was supposed to come out to the block and fix my car today after work, so I went out to wait in the afternoon when the sun was low. I was glad to be outside, anything to get away from all the little things that terrify me. There aren’t any bills stacked in the rolltop desk outside. The mail carrier can’t bring something scary to me outside. It’s harder to google things on my phone than on my laptop.

I waited in the dead car until I couldn’t bear to sit there anymore, and then I got out and watched the sky.

The sun set over LaBelle, yellow streaks over lavender clouds, and then the sun was gone. The yellow streaks turned to wisps and the lavender went gray, and then it turned that odd shade of purple that low clouds get when they hover over city lights.  The branches of the leafless trees went from brown to charcoal to black.

I was in darkness, on the longest night of the year. But the darkness didn’t last.

The porch lights and Christmas lights came on up and down the street, breaking up the purpl, adding some color.  The house I was stuck in front of has one of those luminous white plastic Nativities. I think the Virgin Mary was so much brighter than the other figures because there was only one bulb and she was in the center, but it looked like her heart was glowing brighter than anyone else’s. I wished, for the hundredth or the thousandth time, that I trusted her.

I wished I felt that I could ask her help without fearing she’d do something terrible to punish me.

The panic came over me again.

“I am having a thought. I NOTICE that I am having a thought. It’s normal to have these thoughts, but having them doesn’t make them come true.” 

The car was on a block near the edge of the cliff that separates LaBelle from downtown. I used to love going for walks there, when I was trapped in this neighborhood with no car at all. In the winter, you can see the city lights twinkling here and across the river in Weirton. And you can also hear everything that goes on downtown. Just then, the church downtown started ringing the bells.

Why were they ringing the bells?

Was it something to do with dusk on the solstice, the darkest night of the year? Some ancient tradition I didn’t know? I once was told that evil spirits roamed the earth on the darkest nights, and people would use bells to scare them away. Just then, standing near the cliff’s edge in the cold and dark, I believed it all. I could see it in my mind’s eye. For a few seconds, LaBelle and the grim streets of Downtown Steubenville were flyblown with wriggling demons, and the church was ringing the bells to drive them downriver to Mingo Junction and up to Toronto.

But of course, that’s not why the bells were ringing. It was only the Angelus.

Angelus Domini nuntiavit Mariae, et concepit de Spiritu Sancto. Hail Mary, full of grace. 

It felt so much later than six O’clock, I’d forgotten all about the Angelus.

The Angelus bells echoed off the cliffs of West Virginia over the wine-dark Ohio, calling and repeating, the responsory and the antiphon like two sides of a monastery aisle, and then they were quiet.

Et Verbo caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis. Hail Mary, full of grace.

I am having a thought. I NOTICE that I am having a thought. It is normal to have these thoughts, but having them doesn’t make them come true. 

Then, as if they’d been summoned by the bells, the Lost Girl arrived, driving the man who was going to fix my car. He apologized that the tools were over in Brilliant and he’d have to bring them to install the new alternator first thing in the morning. For now, he would check and make sure it really was the alternator, so we didn’t waste any more time.

I got in the car to pop the hood. He opened the hood and squinted while the Lost Girl shone a flashlight over him. It lit up the inside of the car as well, brighter than day.

   Of this night scripture says: “The night will be as clear as day: it will become my light, my joy.” The power of this holy night dispels all evil! O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!

I am having a thought. I NOTICE that I am having a thought. It is normal to have these thoughts, but having them doesn’t make them come true. 

He touched a piece of metal to something in the engine.

“If you hold a piece of metal to the alternator and it acts like a magnet,” my friend explained, “That means the alternator is bad.”

It seemed like magic to me.

The alternator acted like a magnet.

They promised to come back in the morning with the proper tools, and I’d be on the road before the rain turned to ice.

I went home without my car, one more time.

I am in darkness. But the darkness will not last.