By Anson Cameron
Gloom begets gloom. Darkness is the perfect environment for anxiety. As I鈥檓 taking nightly refuge in bed, whatever anxieties I currently have enliven into a rude health they couldn鈥檛 hope to attain while I鈥檓 in daylight and din. A gutter that has rusted through is dripping outside my window, sounding like a bass drum keeping slow time for a funeral march. It is a noise that, during daytime, would be so unremarkable as to need someone to point it out to me. 鈥淟isten. Do you hear that? I think your gutter鈥檚 buggered.鈥
But at night, when the anxieties emerge gaudied from their dressing rooms and begin to dance across the stage of my mind, the dripping gutter keeps time for the worries that need immediate attention. The gutter itself must be replaced. Reminding me (drip) every five seconds (drip) of the accelerating deterioration of the house, the floorboards need polishing, the walls painting, and then, of course 鈥 the deterioration of everything, of the friendships, of the faculties, and the organs, the memory, the prospects, the dwindling likelihood of ever understanding crypto 鈥 life鈥檚 abstract imperfections blossom into a banal apocalypse given silence and darkness.
I鈥檓 a better friend to myself during the day than at night. I think we all are. Maybe the night brings honesty, a more accurate reckoning of who we are. Maybe I鈥檓 cutting myself too much slack as I skip through my days. During daytime, I get on well with the ghosts of my past 鈥 but at night they seem a degraded crew who never got off their arses to have a go. The 鈥渨hat ifs鈥 and 鈥淚 shouldn鈥檛 haves鈥 mingle and mate in the mind until cause and effect give birth to a roughshod, idiot tribe of Ansons who have galloped headlong at disgrace.
It鈥檚 impossible to sleep with this going on. And sleep is a type of healing, so if you don鈥檛 get enough you rise sick in the morning. At one stage I was getting about two hours a night. You鈥檇 be amazed at what an abstract, removed world this becomes when you鈥檙e sleep-deprived, groggily walking around in a near dream. I was colourblind on two hours鈥 sleep a night. I鈥檓 a much better sleeper than that now and the world is, again, ablaze with colour.