When the Sun Glares at the Moon

How does the sun rise so slowly?

It’s just on the other side of the horizon.

When it breaks that frontier, it’ll rise like nothing can ever stop it.

It’s the sun.

But until then, I wait, and the sunrise finds itself

Only very slowly.

Some movie somewhere once told me that sunrises are magical. The first sunrise of the year especially is supposed to be filled with supernatural promise. Easter also holds some sort of miracle in the light that comes up over the horizon. It doesn’t matter whether the sun comes up over the mountains, forests, fields, or city skylines. Somehow the magic that no matter how dark it was, eventually there will be light again is sweetly encouraging, even though sunlight is just long-distance solar radiation from a dying fire off in space very far away.

Maybe that’s why I prefer to talk to the moon.

It’s remarkable that we tend to sleep all night and thus attribute happy times to daylight. Obviously it’s more dangerous to run around at night, and we can’t see as much at night, so daylight would have advantages over the dark when it comes to making visual memories. Sunlight is warm. If warmth is happiness, then loneliness is cold.

The moon is cold, isn’t it? I’ve always thought it was beautiful, but it must also be cold. I don’t remember many nights waiting for the moonrise that were unreasonably hot. I guess there must have been some, but I don’t remember them. The moon rises much more gently than the sun.

I remember the neon orange moon in a rich purple sky. I remember a pale moon surrounded by glowing ribbons of cloud in turquoise and magenta. I remember a shy moon hiding in turbulent clouds, no doubt scattered by the dome lightning and the restless wind. I remember a silent moon gently kissing my eyes after peeking in my window, creeping across the floor and reaching down to my sleeping face. I remember a billion tiny moons twinkling back up from the thick layer of snow in January, so bright it was almost like daylight. I’ve seen the moon hide so well from the reflection of the sun that it snuffed right out and had to be born again as a new moon.

On those nights, when the moon is tucked into shadow and the stars glimmer not brightly enough, it somehow feels cold even if the sun left a ridiculous amount of heat radiation behind before it slipped beneath the other horizon. A lake of darkness creeps up slowly, thrashing against its banks, calling, beckoning. It repeats that the darkness might as well last forever, because 8 hours until sunrise is sometimes too long.

I don’t think it’s the hope of a sunrise that keeps us alive until morning. Life doesn’t seem quite so hard after dawn, but I don’t think it’s because of the sun.

Shizuku told Haru that when people are anxious, they crave physical touch. Sometimes they crave it so much that it hurts. There’s a deep empty cavity somewhere between the heart and the stomach. Human contact isn’t always physical though. Sometimes the sense that other people are awake is enough of a human touch to alleviate a bit of that emptiness. Sometimes the most intimate of physical contact isn’t enough to siphon off any of that anguish. Sometimes there is no acceptable way to escape from whatever it is that consumes us.

It’s no good asking the sun why it didn’t get here sooner.

It’s no good asking humans why they didn’t get here sooner.

The truth of it is, there’s a void that can only be made less bitter by human care. But don’t make them responsible for fixing your emptiness. You can’t handle your emptiness; neither can they. They have their own emptiness. But they can help.

Is there a solution to this even? Here I’ve spent over 600 words describing an awful empty feeling that you’ve most likely experienced or will experience or are experiencing, and there should follow some sort of hopeful sunshine-filled message that tells you that the sunrise is coming so don’t give up and all that.

I thought I had found one.

But the truth is, that day as the sun crested the horizon, blinding me as it glared across the lake, I realized that I could have lost. I could have just slipped beneath the cold waves, thrashing as my lungs protested, until my limbs succumbed to the cold and I couldn’t fight anymore. Suddenly all the cute hopeful messages in the world seemed like the tossed toilet paper when it rains after Halloween.

Dying wasn’t a beautiful thing. Neither was living. It just was.

But somehow the knowledge that I might have never seen it again made the world something more intense than my empty stomach could stand. Suddenly the world was full of unconsidered things. Suddenly I had all the time in the world to consider them, because all the expectations I’d been crushed under didn’t matter anymore. Suddenly I existed, and I could feel the sun.

So, I guess I lied. The sunrise does matter. It’s not exactly magical or anything, but somehow the words, “I’m waiting for the sunrise” remind me that I can’t stay cold, dark, and alone forever. So, you know, stop asking me why I spend all night rhythmically chanting under my breath. Honestly.