Four in the morning: why am I awake?

This feels like a test, some sort of thing that I have to go through, trial by fire. Or maybe not fire, maybe murky muddy water, or quicksand.

Sometimes when you listen to someone and they tell you what they think is the truth, you believe them. Even when you know that you probably shouldn't. And sometimes it really doesn't matter, because there really is nothing that you can do one way or the other. It can still bug you, knowing that you've been lied to, even when the other person was lying to themselves as well. It can still hurt.

In the darkness, love doesn't exist except as a concept, the intellectual property of Hell's legal counsel.

Does this happen every year? The long dark days add up to an emotional hibernative state, a cranky, grumpy method of madness? Looking back on past years, it seems that this year is different, darker, finer, like a fine roast coffee twisted with a fine Belgian chocolate being drunk by an Italian expatriate with a panama hat and round sunglasses, full of secrets and death.

Frozen rain on the streets. It's quiet.