Thursday night was dark.

I don’t mean it was rainy or overcast, I mean that I was dark.

It was an extremely strange feeling–one I hadn’t felt since my dissolute and wild college days.

By the time we got home from the gym, Michael and I were both exhausted and neither of us wanted to make dinner, so we convinced Grandmom to go out to eat. We eventually ended up going to IHOP, and it was there that the darkness fell.

Mind you, the IHOP is relatively new and in good shape, so what I felt was not a reaction to my surroundings.

As I sat there, I felt a despair fall over me, as if a piece of the Snow Queen’s mirror had fallen into my eyes, and like Kay, wherever I looked I saw ugliness and hopelessness.

A grandmother walked by with her grandson, and all I could see was how wrinkled her clothes were–as if she was trying to look nice but had fallen short and instead looked simply worn and tired.

The girl in the booth across from us was heavy, and all I could notice was that her shirt had ridden up in the back, and a roll of pale fat was bubbling over the top of her jeans. Her companion was scrawny and his pants were falling off. His hair was greasy, his face unshaven, and he spent more on his ball cap–cocked at an asinine angle–than he did on any part of his wardrobe, including his ratty shoes.

A mother walked by with her kids, and all looked dirty–not filthy dirty from playing outside, but as if a dust had fallen upon them, turning everything slightly gray.

A group of teenage girls walked by to their table, and all I could see was over treated hair, too much makeup, and faces that would too soon lined with cares and worries for their futures at that moment were not bright and hopefully, but instead the struggle of living on the edge with too many kids too young and not enough education to pull them out of the hole.

The life and hope and joy were drained out of everything I could see, from the ripped number on our booth, to the dead leaves and branches on the trees outside.

It was all I could do to continue to sit at the table, to try and choke down my meal.

Thank the gods the despair lifted and today was a relatively good day.

But the darkness still lurks, just out of the corner of my eye, waiting for a moment of weakness to surge back and lead me to despair.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

I will fear no evil.
I will fear no evil.
I will fear no evil.