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I can’t recall exactly when I began sleeping with the lights on. But I know I was once superstitious about switching off the bathroom light. I would let it on 24/7 because I felt that it signified my inextinguishable passion, my unremitting tenacity to strive and thrive, not only in studies but sports as well.

There was a night I placed a clown made of clay on the table. It was not a whole figure of a clown but only the head. In the dim room, its eyes glimmered with green luminescence and it was grinning wickedly at me. In the midst of the night, I switched on the lights and kept it away in my drawer. When I switched off the lights again, I dozed off.

At some point of time in my life, when lights were off during night, I felt uncomfortable as I sensed there was something around. Darkness was one, but there was something else. Perhaps it was darkness itself but darkness itself did not stand alone. There was something layered with darkness. That unexplainable was not a separate entity. It was with darkness or it was darkness itself. I did not know what. I just knew that when my room turned pitch black, another world came alive. As much as darkness devoured me, so did something. Something sinister, something hollow, something that sends a chill down the spine. Not apparition in particular. Not hideous monsters that hide under your bed. But an oblivion that you could not comprehend. It surrounds your head to toe and you are in it. You feel it all over you, subjecting you to utmost vulnerability. So I decided to leave my lights on. For years I slept with lights on.

Until someone told me that sleeping in the dark is essential for the body to produce a kind of antibody to prevent cancer. I switched off the lights without hesitation one night because dark did not scare me anymore at that time.

I have been thinking whether sleeping in bright florescent lights is good or bad. Why do we get old? Part of the reason is because the bacteria that sticks to our body. Will it be anti-ageing if those lights shine on our skin? Because by doing so, the bacteria will not be active. This I have to leave for experts to tell me.

Currently, dark is where I like to lie when I rest. It symbolizes serenity and a sense of nothingness. Your mind plunges completely into dreams as your body shuts down. Your mass is still around but basically you cease to exist. You vanish from this world and the only thing that brings you back is when people witness your mass on the bed. If they do not, you are as good as nonexistent. If you are in a coma, you exist because other people are conscious to define you. But if the whole world is in a coma, you no longer exist. Other people will not exist either. When you vanish at night, other people do as well. That is why the world is dead at night.

When the city is dead, you are alive. You are the only one existing at the wee hours in the morning. You feel you are the only person in this world. That is why loneliness creeps and emptiness tiptoes. It pounces on you and a sudden shudder of the frosty night reminds you that you are the ‘mere’ one staying up, marooned in the world of dark and death. The pc flickers but there is no sense of life from it. Then when your body succumbs to exhaustion, morning breaks and you are reluctant to go. You feel that you want to stay because the world revives. You disappear from this world when all of them return. You are alive when the world is dead. When the world is alive, you are dead. You exist when they do not. They exist when you do not.

Just as darkness is the best place for one to transport to another world, I escape from this world which you call reality and into another world where you think is unreal and you call that dream. Sometimes, dreamland just seems so belonging and breath-taking that I wish I would dwell there forever.

There lie unfulfilled tasks, your deepest desires and your emotions that are converted into patches of images. Of course, dreams can be queer but they are so real. If I knew it was a dream when I was dreaming, I would go rape pretty girls because nothing would happen to me. Even if I get caught I would wake up in one piece. But I did not know so I did not do such a thing. But recently I dreamt of fighting and that reflects what I would really do in reality.

Did the sky get gloomier? Realize I could not as it was night time. Small drops of water started splashing outside my window. Then the thunder came. The lightning prior to it did not flash and light up my shadowy room. The lightning was barely detected. So each thunder that struck did not give you any sense of warning. The thunder was not ear splitting and frightful as those that would make you quiver. Beyond the sky, they exploded; unpredictable but not enough to scare a kid.

The heaven opened. It was wee hours in the morning but my boo and I were awake and engaged in a conversation as to why people feel that it is comfy to sleep during rain?

I guess I have heard more than often people saying that it would be nice to sleep during rain. Is it a fact? But I never felt the difference. There was even once the thunder woke me up in the middle of night. I wonder whether people are influenced by other people. As in when people tell you that it is nice sleeping during rain, you are made to think that: “Yes it is nice sleeping during rain”. Probably at the start, you have qualms, that later will be overcome by confirmation, not yours but because you have heard many people saying the same thing. Eventually, even though you haven’t really experimented or maybe you have, you go around telling people that it is nice sleeping during rain. Maybe physically you do not feel so but psychologically you do. Because of people’s opinion, you are made to feel that sleeping during rain is comfy.

But there are reasonable explanations as to why sleeping during rain is more comfy. Let’s say in the afternoon, the weather here in Malaysia would be scorching and glaring. The arrival of rain simply means that the sky would turn dark and the weather would cool off. A nap would be fulfilling during such soothing climate.

Or because when it rains, there is better air ventilation that provides a good sleep. If not, probably the monotonous rhythm of rain dancing around the roof easily makes you doze off.

My boo said probably when it is raining, you cannot watch Astro, you can not go online because the lightning may strike your modem. You do not have the mood to do anything else because the sky is glum. So the best thing to do is sleep.

As I was writing this, it was raining outside. I guess many people would have taken this opportunity to take a nap. Now that I have come to the very end of my article, the rain has stopped. There is no more rain but the sky is no brighter. Are those people still sleeping?