For the first time, I was not afraid of the darkness; I stayed there contemplating it as if it were an old friend I had not seen in a long time. My intentions were nothing more than to ignore it, but there it was, flooding my room, settled into everything I could not make out. It surprises me that it has no temperature or texture whatsoever; like a chameleon, it adapts to anything and, to my misfortune, it attunes itself to my state of mind. I thought that by closing my eyes it would go away. The result was far worse than the initial problem: now it was in my mind, wandering through my head, invading my dreams and memories. In every one of them it had already been there, and I had never noticed its presence; I never took it into account, it was only a small black stain in each of them. When I finally gathered the courage to confront it, I began to sweat; my head swayed back and forth, my pulse quickened considerably, the air pressed against my chest, and the words threatened to explode like a bomb. I was about to scream at it, to tell it to leave my life and never return. It was too late, because when I uttered the first word, it embraced me like no one ever had, wrapped me in its cloak, and sang a lullaby into my ear. It adopted me as its daughter, lulled me to sleep as if rocking a newborn, carried me to my cradle, and left me there, in a sleep from which I never awoke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n