The Bat Lady's Light

I can’t believe it. Yesterday after my walk, I witnessed a miracle. The kind of miracle not many people witness.

Angels sang, lightning flashed, the earth may have even moved.

A light was shining in the darkness. A light that I had never seen before. A light that had never shone before.

A light that had awakened blackness out of a deep sleep. A light from the the bat lady’s window.

After seven months of living in the dark, she actually turned her lights on. Seven months of pitch blackness.

Seven months of fumbling in the dark through scotopia. Seven months of stagnation had finally come to an end.

I don’t know what event took place to cause her to turn the lights on, but it was a miracle.

After last week’s post on how she lived in the dark,
a metamorphosis must have taken place.

She must have somehow heard my thoughts through the ethers or heard about the post through her incredible hearing facility.

I am still in shock. The reason she has turned on the lights is because she got curtains. Well sort of.

She got curtains that oddly enough only block the middle of her windows.

So if people look in, they will see her with the middle part of her body pixled out, like it is censored. In other words, you can see her head and her legs as strange as that sounds.

Maybe the second phase of her epiphany will be to get full length curtains. The wise and wonderful Max thought that perhaps my neighbor (the bat lady) was depressed.

I hadn’t thought of that. She could have very well been depressed, although she didn’t display any outward signs.

Max’s thought had me intrigued so I waited for the opportunity to “run into” the bat lady.

I saw her car pulling in the driveway and I “pretended” to get something from the car when I just “happened” to see her.

“Hello neighbor,” I say. “Hi Alexys,” she smiles. Before I could get another word out, she enthuses, “Did you see my new curtains?”

“You finally got curtains,” I say, acting surprised. She points to her window and says, “Look.” She was so excited that she couldn’t contain herself.

Then out of the blue she says, “I don’t have any motivation. I just don’t like to do anything I don’t have to do. My mother is coming to help me decorate my house."

I thought to myself, how sad it is not to have any motivation or reason to get up in the morning. We need motivation to make us move.

Motivation helps us face the day with a positive attitude. It keeps our head upright. Elevates our consciousness.

Then I remembered some prior conversations with her. She broke up with her boyfriend a year ago and she is having a hard time getting over it.

He told her that she had no motivation. When he moved back to Germany, it really hit her hard.

She is already a nurse, but now she want to become a nurse practitioner (almost like a doctor.) All she talks about is how she would like to move to Germany one day and show him how she’s changed. They say, “Success is the best revenge.”

In essence he did her a favor by telling her what seemed to be negative at the time, but was really positive.

I guess the lesson here is not to judge a bat by its cover. What I saw as being a bat was really an adjustment period. She had shut her heart down and left all the lights off.

When I spoke to her, I saw how the light shone in her eyes when she spoke of the imminent arrival of her mother.

I saw how living alone probably caused her loneliness. I sensed how she must have felt in the dark. How she must have craved light. How her own internal light was flickering, almost going out. I wanted to help her realize her light and to re-light it.

I told her that ironically her curtains made her place look brighter. They reflected her internal light. She smiles and says, “I never thought of it like that.”

She went on to say, “When my mother gets here, we’re going to paint, get paintings, and just have fun decorating together.”

Your house reflects who you are. It reflects your light. I believe that if we ignite the light in someone else, they in turn will ignite it in someone else. Maybe we really can make a difference?

I think she (or her ex) may have misdiagnosed herself as having no motivation, when all she had was temporary motivation; which just has to be re-channeled into motivation.

Motivation comes from being happy, feeling good about your life and having hope for your future.

It doesn’t hurt us to be good neighbors, good friends, companions, coworkers, good people.

Each year millions of people die of loneliness. When we feel lonely, we inadvertently shut down own body, which in turn shuts down our immune system and makes us susceptible to diseases.

We have to watch out for each other, talk to each other, touch each other, be the light for each other; especially during the holiday season.

Light gets through the smallest openings; through doors, blinds, fog, darkness, and hearts.

Thanks Max for helping me see another dimension to the story. Thanks for being the eyes in the dark. And thank you all for being my light.