For as long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been afraid of the dark. It never mattered if all I had to do was bring out the trash. My heart would rattle in my chest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It doesn\u2019t help that I\u2019m completely directionally challenged. I\u2019m not a very visual person, and to make it worse, I\u2019m also incredibly oblivious to my surroundings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The only two places where I\u2019ve ever had a sense of orientation were Vienna and London during short vacations there. Why? I wish I knew. My friends were amazed when I kept telling them where to go and was actually correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since the struggle with feeding the colonies (the owner of a local dealership is making a stink) and setting traps for Ember, I\u2019ve been out more and more after dark. I even sat on the sidewalk in a cat bed for over an hour one night. Mind you, my kids were in the car close by, so I wasn\u2019t completely alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I still want someone with me when I feed the colonies in the dark. And at the second colony I\u2019m feeding, there\u2019s a patch of woods right behind it where I have two plastic bins that I put food in so it stays dry when it rains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m not going in there when it\u2019s dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As my niece likes to say: Es gibt Grenzen, und das ist eine f\u00fcr mich.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n There are limits, and that is one of mine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So I\u2019m feeding that colony during the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What I\u2019ve also noticed is how much life still happens after it gets dark. I obviously knew that, but I haven\u2019t seen it in a long time because I generally stay home once it gets dark. Not because of my fear, necessarily, but because being out in the dark overall isn\u2019t that pleasant\u2014my night vision has also taken a nosedive\u2014and I just\u2026 don\u2019t want to go places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unless we have something like a choir performance for my daughter or we go to the movies, I\u2019m not out in the evening. I prefer to be home, away from people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As such, constantly being out at night, being somewhat lost even on familiar routes because of my vision issues, obliviousness, and complete lack of orientation is\u2026 interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a German interesting, by the way. Not a good interesting. The kind of interesting that means, I have some thoughts about this, and none of them are positive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I\u2019m still doing all of this. Not even with hatred in my heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I am tired, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But I\u2019m no longer afraid of the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For as long as I can remember, I\u2019ve been afraid of the dark. It never…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2014,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2013\/revisions\/2014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sabrinablaum.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}