Contraband

Because she loves her daughter, and she loves breaking the rules almost as much, my mom spent the last couple days scouting out traders of illegal and restricted substances. Person after person couldn't help her, but for a smile and a Christmas cookie (to be fair, she does have a great smile, and bakes great cookies) they gave up the names of these illicit purveyors. It finally paid off, and she came home triumphant. We are now the happy owners of two packs of old-style, 100-watt, planet-killing lightbulbs.

To compensate, I may have to give up the idea of ever having a dog - according to QI, the carbon footprint of a large-dog owner is equal to that of the driver of a 4x4, although I don't know how much of that is bunk - but it's worth it to see bright light for the first time since August. I feel safe for the first time in four months.

I'm not scared of the dark, per se, because I'm fine in outside dark. I can happily walk the country roads from San Luis to S'Algar in almost pitch-black, with only the stars to guide me. I walk at night in my neighbourhood, in all kinds of weather, including night fog. I'm fine at bonfires, fireworks displays, Halloween parties, séances. But there is something about murky half-light that makes me highly uncomfortable. Since I was a child I've had these nightmares where not much really happens, except that I know that something's after me. I snap on my bedside lamp, and I wonder if it will come on. It does, but the light is dark orange and seems to get darker and redder as the seconds pass. Oddly I am reminded of redshift, and there is this sense in the back of my head that the light is dark and red because I'm moving further and further away from the world. I try to escape the house, because I instinctively know that outside is safer, and I make it outside. Sometimes there are people there, and I cry out to them, asking why everything is so dark and none of the lights are working properly, but they tell me that the lights are the same as they always are. And he's still coming, whoever or whatever is chasing me, and I try to run but even with my best efforts, what should be a sprinter's pace feels like I'm running through chest-high treacle.

I still sleep with the light on. I'm not sure when I started - a couple years before the rape, I think. Definitely before, anyway, although it was at some point after I moved out of Tony's, so sometime between 2002 and 2005. But now I have light. Real light. It's so tempting to just lie there and bathe in it. I've put a 100-watt bulb only in my overhead light, which I use very rarely, but it's enough to know that I can walk over and snap the switch if necessary.

Mom, of course, hates bright lights. If she has to use electric, she likes 40-watt pearl bulbs, although she prefers 20-watt when she can get them. And never overhead lights, but lamps with darkened shades strategically placed around the rooms to cast shadows and create "atmosphere". At last count, we have six small darkened lamps and two uplighters in an eight-room house. I honestly think she'd use the paraffin lamps from Menorca if they wouldn't require such an amount of effort and time to clean. In Menorca, her house had no electricity or running water, and she loved it that way.
But she went to the trouble of buying 100-watt bulbs for me. Even if I'm only to use them in my room.

Oh well, at least not being able to see anywhere in the house - especially the kitchen - gets me out of doing dishes.