The Dimming

Chapter Six

The dimming doesn’t arrive like a switch being flipped.

It arrives like a slow eclipse — gradual, creeping, almost imperceptible until the light is already gone.

It begins at the edges.

The corners of my vision feel softer.

Colors lose their saturation.

The world looks the same, but it feels… less.

Less sharp.

Less bright.

Less alive.

The dimming is not darkness.

Darkness is absolute.

Darkness is honest.

The dimming is a betrayal —

a slow draining of light from the inside out.

The first thing to dim is my energy.

Not the physical kind — the internal spark.

The thing that animates me, that gives shape to my thoughts, that lets me rise into my own life.

It doesn’t vanish.

It flickers.

A thought that once lit up my mind now glows faintly, like a dying ember.

An idea that once felt electric now feels muted.

Even my own voice sounds quieter, as if the volume has been turned down without my consent.

Then the dimming reaches my emotions.

Not flattening — fading.

Joy doesn’t disappear.

It just loses its color.

Sadness doesn’t deepen.

It just loses its edges.

Anger doesn’t ignite.

It just smolders.

Everything becomes a shade of almost.

The underwater mind slows me.

The weight holds me.

The quicksand traps me.

But the dimming…

the dimming erases the light that once helped me navigate all of it.

The next thing to dim is my presence.

I move through rooms like a shadow of myself — visible, functional, but lacking the brightness that once made me unmistakably me. My children look at me longer, searching for the spark they’re used to. They don’t say anything. They don’t have to. They feel the dimming before I do.

I’m still here.

Just harder to see.

The dimming reaches my thoughts next.

Not confusion — opacity.

Ideas feel fogged.

Memories feel distant.

Plans feel impossible to illuminate.

It’s like trying to read in a room where the lamp is dying — the words are still there, but the light isn’t strong enough to make sense of them.

Then comes the dimming of desire.

Not the dramatic loss of wanting everything.

The quiet loss of wanting anything.

Food tastes muted.

Music feels flat.

The things that once brought comfort now feel like tasks.

The things that once brought joy now feel like memories.

The dimming is not numbness.

Numbness is clean.

Numbness is empty.

The dimming is a slow suffocation of brightness.

A quiet erasure of color.

A soft collapse of intensity.

A gentle, relentless fading of the internal flame.

The hardest part is this:

the dimming is subtle enough to hide,

but strong enough to change everything.

I can still move.

I can still speak.

I can still function.

But I cannot shine.

The dimming is the Ground’s most insidious weather —

not heavy like the weight,

not sticky like the molasses,

not treacherous like the quicksand.

It is the quiet loss of luminosity.

The slow fading of the self’s internal light.

The moment where I stop burning and start glowing faintly, like a bulb on its last filament.

This is the dimming.

Not the end.

Not the bottom.

Just the moment where the world loses its brightness

and I lose mine.