A dark road traveled

I remember walking home after nightfall many years ago along a Welsh country lane. It was dark. The sort of dark that my childhood nightmares were full of. The only light from a few cold distant stars. The feint, feint outlines of trees and fences and gates. Sudden sounds from the blackness setting the whispered beginnings of panic on the edge of your reason. The dark almost taking on the fevered from of some primordially remembered monster.

We stumbled home that evening bumping into obstacles unseen, into posts or wire or walls. Being scratched by the hedgerow and by the thistles and by the nettles. Each a cause for cursing and swearing and a growing fear.

Thinking back on it I realise how like my life that is. My only consolation is that eventually we did find our way home. Find our way to a safe, peaceful haven where the feelings of danger and panic subsided. And it was warm and it was cosy!