the truth is lit by shadows

exploring darkness with clubbing, shadow work and Haruki Murakami (+ with journal prompts).

Dec 15, 2024

I developed a slight habit back in the summer months. After a day of running about, I would come home at the cusp of night to the sun dipping below the horizon behind me, and the first thing I would do would be to pop an edible. They were horribly sour — a nasty blueberry gummy that I would force down like a pill instead of chewing. I’d pop the edible and then race the high, trying to do a bunch of productive things before the effects hit. Normally I’d get through a shower and the first-half of cooking dinner before my eyelids got low, my movements becoming unhurried and useless (I have a slow metabolism). By the time it was fully dark outside, I’d be properly high and ready to snuggle up in bed with a good audiobook or an entertainingly awful movie.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: Chioma, that doesn’t sound like a habit, that sounds like addiction. To that I say… please leave me alone. Lol.

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Anyway… I maintained this HABIT throughout all of summer and I was forced to confront my reliance on the routine when my stash ran out at the very beginning of November. Not only was I sober when it was dark outside, but it was now dark outside at four o’clock in the evening and the craving for that sour high was a whole five hours too early. So early that it was now cutting into the time where I was meant to still be a productive, fully-functioning student. As someone who likes to joke that their only real addictions are social media, sugar and listening to music too loud in their earphones, this sudden itching for an edible freaked me out. In an aggressive fit of self-preservation, I vowed to never visit a dispensary again. Fortunately, that vow has stayed intact. I will admit, however, that this is not really the point of this post.

Rather, I’ve been thinking about the darkness and how we sync our lives and practices up to it. Countries in the Northern Hemisphere turn their clocks back an hour when the man-made concept of daylight saving time comes to an end. People, in their own bodies, find themselves yawning the moment the sun sets which ends up lulling them into bed long before they’d normally go to sleep for the night. We are either naturally conditioned to interact with the dark in a certain way, or we actively work to mould our existence and schedules around it. For example, there are behaviours that we prefer to save for the dark: romantic dates, sleeping, spiritual rituals like prayer or meditation, crime. Through this we see that darkness doesn’t only aid in the creation of a routine. We see that it also provides a veil for safety, for vulnerability and for, what is becoming more evident to me, exposure.

Such places open secret entries into darkness in the interval between midnight and the time the sky grows light. None of our principles have any effect here. No one can predict when or where such abysses will swallow people, or when or where they will spit them out.
— After Dark (2004)

If you want to find out whether a group of people you’ve just met are people you should continue hanging out with, I suggest going clubbing with them. Maybe in ten years when I leave my early-twenties behind and I have ankles that can’t quite keep up with dancing from dusk until dawn, I’ll have a different piece of advice to give. However, right now, I think clubbing is the best litmus test for helping me choose who I wish to pursue deep, future friendships with.

My early undergrad years included a lot of this testing and now, as a masters student in a country and city I’m foreign to, I’ve been doing it all over again.

I’ll meet a person. I’ll learn their first name and maybe we’ll go even further, get even more intimate, and I’ll learn something scandalous like their course of study. Then within an hour, I’ll find myself accepting an invite to some weekend plans. This acceptance will lead to me being added into a group-chat of the prospective friend’s already-established clique. iMessages will flood in regarding plans for pre-drinks and the main venue of choice for the night. Throughout this entire exchange, I’ll be taking quick mental notes, trying to ascertain what the vibes will end up being when I do eventually meet all these text message bubbles in person. Text messages hardly encompass the truth of a whole person but I like to think I’m pretty skilled at reading between the lines. Also, I know exactly what a night out can expose — show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are.

Opening myself to meeting strangers through experiences like this has led me to some interesting places. Smoke filled basements. Shipping containers plastered with tags, plastered with stickers. House parties with sticky air, clubs with even stickier floors. Garden parties where there’s nowhere to sit but on the grass, or on each other. Haphazard get-togethers in local parks where two bottles of something-cheap-and-decently-alcoholic are lazily passed between everyone in attendance. Here, the night is more than just the time of day. The night is a waiver form. It is a permission slip. I take a sip, swing my hips and sign the dotted line.

By the time I stumble home I always have a pretty solid idea on whether I’ll be seeing those people again. I’ll know the answer to a whole bunch of questions. Did I have fun? Did I feel safe? Or, was this a one-and-done kind of situation? Will I still be an active participant in the group-chat come the morning? Or, more scandalously, will I wake up to find myself already removed?

There’s something about the shroud of darkness, of night, that makes people more willing to shed their inhibitions. As a people-watcher, as someone who wholeheartedly believes that I was put on this Earth to absorb and observe, I use these nights out to gorge on the behaviours of others. If they drink, how do they handle their liquor? Do they know when to stop, or do they keep going until their body (or the bartender) makes that decision for them? How do they safeguard themselves? How do they safeguard me? (Very important question if you’re going out in a mixed-gender group, or if you unfortunately find yourself partying with the drunk-I’ll-fight-everyone-in-this-bar type). What do they take alongside drinks — a cheeky cigarette, maybe? Another not-so-cheeky substance? Am I comfortable with that? How do they speak to strangers — to the waiters, to the other clubbers, to whichever ride-share driver is (un)lucky enough to answer the request to drive us all home?

Under the ever-flashing lights of a club ceiling, I swear, I can see everything.

There’s darkness in the other sense, of course. The internal kind. I remember complimenting someone in front of my cousin and her immediate response was, “of course he’s a nice man… things are going well for him,” and I remember tilting my head at that. What an interesting thing to say and wholeheartedly believe. This idea that you get the best out of someone only when they, themselves, are happy and content. This idea that you can never truly get the whole picture of someone when their days are full of nothing but light.

I’m a little wary of accepting this view as a solid truth because I think it’s wrong to assume someone operates with a level of inauthenticity, of shallowness, just because they’re not currently suffering. Still, I do think that my cousin wasn’t entirely off-base.

Observing how someone reacts to stress and adversity works at revealing another side of them. Not a better one, or a truer one, but a different one. Think, finally seeing the dark side of the moon — it’s still the same shape, still made of the same mineral material, but there are craters, domes and mountains that you hadn’t had the chance to notice before. Seeing that other side is imperative when you’re trying to grasp the wholeness of a thing, of a person, of yourself.

I met a girl several months ago. We’ll call her Dahlia for the purposes of this post.

After talking for a bit, Dahlia invited me to a pre-planned night out with her and some of her friends. As a sucker for a good ol’ girls night, I went and quickly realised that I was the sole person in the group that was not only single, but happily so. Normally, this is a complete non-factor but my singleness seemed to really interest the women. Most of my time at that bar was spent answering questions about my boyfriend-less-ness, and eventually my queerness, only for the questions to circle back to why I wasn’t actively interested in finding a partner at all.

I would give my answers and I would be met with rebuttals from the other women about the greatness of their boyfriends, their spouses, their fiancés, about how all my grievances simply weren’t mirrored in their own respective relationships. To put it plainly, it was annoying. But, when we left the bar and went dancing in a nearby club, I left about four hours later with my makeup pleasantly sweated off and my smile giddy from the fun I had with all of them on the dance floor. They were free when it came to music, free from embarrassment when it came to screaming lyrics and attempting choreography. I like to sample unbridled joy as often as I can, so the decision to put Dahlia and her friend-group down as people I’d like to meet again was an easy decision to make.

About two months later, I got a random text from Dahlia. The notification was a surprise, especially since we hadn’t spoken in a while. In the text, she’s telling me that she needs to go out, that she needs a girls night because she’s, apparently, going insane. When I do show up at the bar, I was surprised to find that Dahlia’s already sitting in the booth, and she’s sitting in it all alone. I asked her about that.

“They’re all busy tonight,” she said, the stem of an empty wine-glass pinched between her fingers, knowing she didn’t need to elaborate on who they were. “It’s just you and me tonight.”

Given that Dahlia and I’s budding friendship was the guest-pass that gave me access to the group’s get-togethers, I wasn’t at all fussed over hanging out with her alone. I did, however, falter over how she’d presented the situation to me. It became pretty clear that I’d been the last resort, the final contact number tapped on when the other attempts at conversation went unanswered. So I took a seat and the drinks came, the small talk turned to medium talk turned to the crux of why Dahlia texted me to begin with.

“He broke up with me.”

I admit that I don’t actually remember what my response was. I’m pretty sure it was an unintelligible mix of a gasp and a deeply confused huh? I’d met her boyfriend the last time we’d gone out. Upon her request, he’d been willing to drive me home to help me avoid an Uber fare. During that twenty-five minute journey, I dealt with a level of third-wheeling this world has never seen before. To put it plainly, they were fucking cute together. Seven years into their relationship — they shared sentences, inside jokes, held hands over the centre console. She’d told me she moved out here to live with him. They shared the car and were apparently toying with the idea of buying a home together. They were unmarried but who needs that when there’s love. Right?

“He took a job offer. Some research shit,” she said. “And when he moves he’ll be living in allocated lodgings.”

“Where’s the job located?”

“Not here.”

It was around this time that I noticed that I actually didn’t know her that well. Sure, this wasn’t the first time we’d spoken or had drinks but this was the first time that she was grieving and I was being expected to fill the role of advice-giver. I’m quite solution orientated — almost blunt in my approach —and I like to think I’m self-aware enough to know that my genre of advice is not always what people want or need from someone trying to comfort them.

My close friends and family know I’m like this; when people close to me want comfort in the form of practical help they know it’s me that they can call. Realising that I didn’t know what comfort to give Dahlia made me realise that she didn’t know me that well either. There was clearly a form of comfort that she wanted, that she expected, that I’ve never been known to naturally provide. The gap in our knowledge of one another was a yawning distance.

To help her and to help myself, I got quiet. I let her talk. She told me about her boyfriend being weird for weeks, about how she finally got fed up and told him to tell her what was going on, about how he cried after telling her and how she’d cried because how could he make such a big decision without telling her. By the end of it all, she revealed her next course of action: she was moving back to her home-state, back to her family, because she couldn’t afford to live out here alone.

The night went on. At first I felt like I was doing a pretty good job. I stopped ordering shots and, instead, morphed myself into the friend a girl needs to take her mind off heartbreak. I had her laughing, got her dancing, and eventually we were sitting outside while she lit a cigarette.

She exhaled. “You know [redacted] didn’t come tonight because her man won’t let her.”

It took me a moment to catch up with the drastic tone shift but she didn’t give me time to respond. It didn’t really feel like she wanted me to.

“He doesn’t let her do anything,” she continued. “Won’t even let her marry him despite how desperate she is for it.”

Woah. You see, I’d met [redacted] on that very first night out. I’d liked her well enough but that wasn’t what had me feeling so scandalised by the information. Rather, I was shocked because I was under the impression that Dahlia liked her. I thought they were friends and that they’d been so for quite some time. Hell… Dahlia had introduced [redacted] to me with the flourish of a proud mother — all smiles, booming voice, hyperbolic praise concerning [redacted]’s most recent career success.

At the very least I assumed Dahlia and [redacted] were friendly enough for there to be a code of confidentiality between them, which made telling the newbie (me) about private relationship woes worked as being a direct violation. I remember feeling slighted on [redacted]’s behalf and it wasn’t just the exposure of [redacted]’s business that rocked me. It was the exposure of Dahlia’s bitterness and how she’d directed it at someone she presumably cared for.

Of course she was a nice woman; things were going well for her. I felt myself shut down immediately. Mentally, I was done with the night. Physically, I stayed for another thirty minutes before calling a ride for her and then calling one for myself. From what I remember of our conversation, Dahlia should’ve moved away two weeks later. I can’t fact check that since the two of us no longer keep in touch. I never did get [redacted]’s number, though. A part of me really regrets that.

“Let me tell you something, Mari. The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you've had it: things'll never be the same. All you can do is go on, living alone down there in the darkness...”
– After Dark (2004)

I’m pretty sure I’m attuned to the darkness of others because I’m attuned to the darkness of myself. I’ve written about this before — how plagued I am by my own self-awareness. I know exactly what triggers my nastiest emotions, my harshest reactions. I know precisely what rouses the vindictive little gremlins that reside inside me. Think, three kids in a trench-coat but the three kids are my anger, my triggers, my fears, and the trench-coat is that habit I have of smiling and assuring people that I’m fine even when something, for lack of a better phrase, has irked the fuck out of me.

While typing this and reminiscing over that last conversation with Dahlia, I find myself somewhat incapable of judging her. In the moment it was easy to see her as jealous because, well, it’s clear that’s what she was, but would I have been gracious after such a break-up? Would I have been emotionally rational? My knee-jerk reaction is to say yes but that’s the easy answer. That’s the “light” answer. To get the whole truth, I have to wade deeper into the dark. Would I have really been? Or am I just telling myself that to make myself feel like a better person? Who am I to truly say that I wouldn’t have been triggered into bitterness, into loathing? I know me. I know me too well. I know there’s a darkness in me that’s made me spiteful over things of less importance. The three kids may be hidden by a long trench coat but one wrong move, one undone button, and the whole facade can easily fall apart.

This level of self-awareness isn’t only hard to have, but it was also very hard for me to obtain. Difficult, yes, but not impossible and I have shadow work journaling to thank for that.

Shadow work is a self-interrogation. You grab your journal, your pen and a prompt designed to target the seedy underbelly of your personality, and you set your timer for thirty minutes where you’ll write nonstop.

Each word you’ll write will feel like a flaying, a tug at some old, foul memory or feeling that you forgot you had that still, somehow, dictates how you behave today. You’ll be answering questions about the ugly emotions you’ve been conditioned to suppress when walking around in polite society. That jealousy, that anger, that full blown hatred is spewed onto the page until the timer signals that you can finally stop. You expose yourself when traversing through this darkness and you come out of it feeling raw and laid bare, feeling oddly whole.

I recommend the practice to anyone interested in re-meeting themselves. You really can’t learn emotional regulation without first figuring out how you deal with the emotions you normally bury. (There are shadow work journaling prompts at the bottom of this post)!

“Sometimes I feel as if I'm racing with my own shadow,” Korogi says. “But that's one thing I'll never be able to outrun. Nobody can shake off their own shadow.”
— After Dark (2004)

After Dark (2004) by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (translator)

Genre: Magical Realism, Literary

Pages: 191

Personal Rating: ★★★★★

Set on a single winter night in Japan, Murakami’s After Dark gives you a brief glimpse into the lives of a handful of people as they move about and interact along the sleepy streets of Tokyo. There’s a nineteen year old girl intent on spending her night reading in a Denny’s instead of going home; her sister who has been sleeping in the same position for two months straight; the managerial team of a local Love Hotel who have to deal with an injured worker; and, a salaryman who visits said Hotel as it turns into an active yet silent crime scene.

This is my first Murakami read! I haven’t had the urge to pick up any of his works because there’s a pretty widely held sentiment that the guy is a bit excessive with his descriptions of women’s boobs. However, a friend of mine recommended this book by explicitly stating that it has none of that obsessive boob-love in it and I can testify that he was right about that. He also said that After Dark’s short length works as a perfect sample of Murakami’s writing style and how he interrogates his themes through the genre of magical realism — a genre I’ve grown to really love.

The world Murakami paints throughout this novel reminds me of being in a car on a rainy night, driving through the city. Rain batters the windows, and the red, white, blue and green of passing traffic lights, store signs and cars bounce and blur around the droplets on the glass. The world of After Dark is vivid in colour yet blurred in form.

“It's not as if our lives are simply divided into light and dark. There's a shadowy middle ground. Recognizing and understanding the shadows is what a healthy intelligence does.”
— After Dark (2004)

After Dark is a book that explores duality. There’s darkness in the light, light in the darkness, and the inevitability of human nature forces you to hold these two components within you at all times. The book begs the question: when the rest of the world is asleep, what parts of you wake up?

Each character we meet engages in conversations about what has led them into being a night-owl — it’s either their nine-to-five, their avoidance of their family, their five-to-nine, or their desire to attend late night band practice. No matter what their excuses end up being, it seems that they all agree on one thing: their lives have been conditioned to the dark. Through meeting each other on these dark streets of the city, at a time where close to zero onlookers are present, each character unveils themselves under the protection of night and away from the unforgiving glare of the morning-sun.

If you couldn’t already tell, I loved this book. in my opinion, it’s more of an experience than a novel with a concrete plot. But, writing that gorgeous, I give Murakami permission to take me on whatever plotless journey he wants. That being said, the ending of the book is open and entirely unresolved. Given that this book spans a single night and only so much can happen in that time the open ending was perfect. Rather than the story “ending,” it, instead, feels paused by the encroaching morning and the bustle of the city waking up. The characters we’ve grown to know during the night are still there, somewhere, but they don’t exist in the same way during the waking hours. Because of that, we (the reader alongside the omniscient narrator) decide to leave them alone and, with that, the book ends.

We can sense the approach of dawn. The deepest darkness of the night has now passed. But is this actually true?
— After Dark (2004)

Shadow Work Journal Prompts…

With the year coming to an end and New Year’s Resolutions being thought of, here is a list of journaling prompts that you can use to start your own shadow work journey in 2025 (or now). Get some paper, a pen and set a timer for 15 - 30 minutes! Keep in mind, these questions are meant to be hard to answer.

When you feel emotional pain due to past traumas, where in the body do you feel that pain is stored?
What’s a question you had as a child that never really got answered?
What are your “comfort movies” or shows? Pin-point exactly what it is about them that brings you comfort and why.
What can you forgive in others that you struggle to forgive in yourself? Why do you think that is?
Explore a childhood memory that brings up discomfort. What emotions do you still attach to this memory and how does it influence your current behaviour?
What,makes you feel the most jealous? In what ways does this jealousy manifest?
Write about someone you haven’t yet forgiven. What did they do? Why have you not forgiven them?
What do you think your best quality is? What about your worst? Why have you labelled these qualities “good” and “bad,” respectively?
When do you feel defensive in relationships? Why? How do you behave?
What’s the biggest promise to someone else that you’ve broken? What led you to break it? Did they ever forgive you?