Editor’s Note: Amber Sayer is one of the three winners of the RCWMS 2024 Essay Contest, selected for her awe-inspiring reflection on the theme of darkness and night, inspired by the photography of our 2024 Artist-in-Residence, MJ Sharp.
I was always fascinated by the night sky. I insisted that I learn the order of the planets in tandem with the days of the week and months of the year; the sequences were all of equal value to me. Instead of treats like ice cream, I begged for glow-in-the-dark stars as rewards when I was a young girl. My frugal parents would dole them out a few at a time, and I’d pore over the sheet of five-pointed lime-green stickers to choose the two or three that would now take up residence on my popcorn ceiling even though every star was identical. To me, they were like shelter dogs in cages, not only in need of rescue in my makeshift planetarium but also bearers of unique celestial backstories.
I named every one of the glowing ceiling adornments: first, relying just on little-girl creativity, and later, using a far-too-advanced astronomy book to assign correct celestial names. I even tried constructing various constellations, though my rate of star acquisition woefully trailed my aspirations, so it was certainly a slow process.
I could never visualize how the pattern of stars mapped out the images they were supposed to depict, and I wasn’t very keen on mythology or folklore, so the stories and layouts for constellations didn’t resonate with me.
However, I loved the constellation Orion—not because he was a mythical hunter but rather because I could always find the three stars of the belt somewhere in the night sky. Orion felt like a constant in my life. When I would be homesick at sleepaway camp, instead of singing songs around the campfire or peeling sticky marshmallows off of my stick, I would sit quietly and look at the stars, scanning the confetti of glitter, painting the tapestry, and look for the three familiar celestial lanterns dotting the belt. I would think about how Mom and Dad would see the same stars at home and we were all safe under the same natural blanket.
Orion was the first constellation I completed on my own bedroom ceiling, and the one I stared at each night until every last photon of light had faded from the phosphorescent material coating the plastic stickers. Alone in the darkness of my familiar room, I’d whisper “Goodnight stars”—perhaps a homage to Goodnight Moon, perhaps because the stars often felt like my only friends.
In ninth grade, I enrolled in the astronomy class at my high school, an upper-level science elective. My guidance counselor had to talk with the teacher to permit me to take the course as a freshman. Fortunately, my geekiness, academic aptitude, and persistence paid off. I couldn’t wait for my first class.
It ended up being a complete disappointment. The teacher was as eager for his impending retirement as my handful of classmates—all seniors—were to graduate. I quickly learned that asking questions yielded a communal groan from the class, and since I was already the babyish freshman and a loner due to my poor social skills (which we later learned were part of my yet-to-be-diagnosed autism), I kept mum. Though I did read my textbook cover to cover, and memorized the Dewey Decimal codes for astronomy sources. Once I got Internet access at home, learning about the sky, the stars, the planets, and other celestial bodies, became the delightful reward that choosing glow-in-the-dark stars for my ceiling had been. Now, I could feed my yen to learn about space whenever I had time. (The bedroom planetarium also started to grow, as every birthday and Christmas I requested more stars.)
Over time, however, my interest in space and the night sky was shelved. Some of that was the natural maturation process. Some of that was the shifting special interests (obsessions) that autistic individuals often cling to.
Eventually, it became deliberate. The catalog of my obsessions could read like a chapter book, with defined interests linked to specific periods of my life. Though I felt a strong pull towards looking up at the stars and feeling grounded by the presence of Orion or clenching my thirst to learn more about astronomical phenomena, I found myself deliberately avoiding going out at night to prevent myself from being lured by the twinkling beacons above.
Doing so reminded me too much of childhood, too much of my prior life, the one where I felt safe, whole, able to dream, alive. After suffering a violent attack in my late twenties, I felt completely broken. Though I healed physically from the wounds, the mental and emotional healing seemed like a lost cause. I muddled through day-to-day life, not participating as a whole person, appearing to tread water enough to keep my head afloat, but fighting a vicious eddy trying to suck me under.
It became self-preservation to separate myself from my prior passions and interests. They only stood as a reminder of the life I lost and how far I felt from that girl.
As our planet took more and more trips around the sun, I started to heal. The growth was so small at first that it was imperceptible. However, just as everything in outer space does change with enough time and the light we see emanating from stars at any given second was actually produced upwards of 100 years ago, my own light was slowly returning.
One night, like all of the nights in the several years before, I dragged myself upstairs, feeling like the ever-burdened Sisyphus. My room was dark, illuminated by just a pie-sliver of moon glow piercing through the dusty window. But, something felt enchanting about the nacreous shadows hovering over my rug. My internal nuclear fusion reaction had enough energy. I unearthed my forgotten telescope. Outside, the dew adorned each grass blade like shimmering tinsel, reflecting the starlit sky.
I lugged the telescope away from the skeletal branches of aged oak trees to a grassy expanse.
The crisp November breeze sent a ripple of goosebumps over my bare legs. I inhaled. Though the brisk air burned my nose like a caustic fire, I drank it in, filling my lungs until they crackled like overstretched folds of an accordion.
I held the icy breath in my body like the secret pain I’d been carrying until it dissipated like stardust into the celestial expanse.
The world was so quiet that I could almost hear the twinkle of each star as clinking tonal notes of xylophone keys playing me a siren song. So I looked up.
There they were: the three bright orbs of Orion‘s belt punctuating the western horizon.
My eyes blurred from tears I tried to hold back. I dried them with the back of my hand, wanting to have as crystal-perfect pupils as the storybook-clear night canopy.
Each tiny spark was its own iridescent gemstone; the collection was a kaleidoscope of heavenly jewels. I soaked it in, cementing the magic into my memory.
Now, embrace my passion for the night sky again, viewing the stars every night that they aren’t overshadowed by cloud cover—no longer feeling loss but rather feeling whole, alive, and healed.
Leave a Reply