The darkness comes for us and we can not stop it. It’s how we deal with the dark that sets the tone for the rest of the winter. Do we curl up in a fetal position and listen to the National non-stop while popping antidepressants and forgetting to plug in our SAD lamp? Or do we embrace it, revel in it, accept the darkness as our friend rather than our enemy? Curl up with a book, put on our best flannel, light a fire and make a pot of tea?

I’ve always been afraid of the dark; not in the sense of boogeymen hiding under my bed, not that kind of dark, but the dark that comes in October with 6:30 sunsets and cold snaps. The dark that previews what’s to come — bare trees, dull gray skies, a seemingly endless season of gloom. While I love autumn and all that comes with it, I understand that with autumn comes the winter, and with the winter comes sadness, angst, depression. It’s a complicated relationship.

But a strange thing is happening to me this year. In a year when everything is completely fucked up, my body and my brain have both broken down and I find myself craving the very same darkness I spent my life dreading. I don’t know the reason for this, I just know that I’m not the same person I was in March before it all went to hell and this is part of it.

So many things are different now. I’m more paranoid. I cry a lot. I tend to shut myself up in my own world, air pods on, scrolling twitter until I’m internally…