The Ritual.

I have this curious little psychological problem. I hate going to bed when the dawn’s breaking. When I turn the light off I want it to be dark. Moonlight is welcome, but that’s all. No lightness in the sky.

Going to bed is a sort of ritual to me. It’s the final act of the day, the laying down to rest, the time to stop moving and thinking, the time to empty my pockets of the daily cares and leave them on the dresser until tomorrow. If the dawn is breaking it isn’t the end of the day, it’s the start of the next one. And so I feel cheated. Cheated out of what exactly, I’m not sure. The ritual, I suppose. If there’s no ritual, the day hasn’t had proper closure and so it’s incomplete.

Weird, eh? Is this a touch of OCD or merely a proper awareness of natural cycles?

The problem is that I usually go to bed some time between 3 and 4am, and it’s getting light by then in high summer. All of which means that I should soon start developing the habit of going to bed a bit earlier.