Before we begin, here's a quick ad break that keeps this free content possible. To go ad free, subscribe via the link in the show notes. For a lot of us, making time to take care of our mental health isn't always straightforward. For me, therapy has been part of that. And one thing I've learned is that even after you decide to ask for help, finding care that's affordable and fit into your life can still be difficult. It can sometimes feel like choosing between getting the right support and being able to afford it, which shouldn't be how mental health care works. That's one of the reasons RULA exists. RULA is a health care company that helps you find in network therapy that fits your budget and works with your insurance. Without the endless searching or confusing fine print, they work with over a hundred insurance plans, which means many people pay around $15 a session. And depending on your coverage, it could even be zero. And instead of sitting on a wait list for months, you can often find a licensed therapist accepting new clients as soon as tomorrow. What I also appreciate is that RULA doesn't just match you and disappear, they stay involved, checking in along the way to make sure your care continues to work for you. Thousands of people are already using RULA to get affordable, high quality therapy that's actually covered by insurance. Visit RULA.com forward slash night falls to get started. After you sign up, you'll be asked how you heard about them. Please support our show and let them know we sent you. That's RULA.com slash night falls. You deserve mental health care that works with you, not against your budget. Just a quick note before the night settles in. Sleep Awareness Week is almost over, and so is our 30-day free trial of the sleepiest network bundle. If you've been thinking about exploring the full world of night falls and everything we create across the network, this is your final opportunity to try out free for a full month. With the bundle, you'll unlock the entire catalogue of night falls, sleepwave and sleep magic, completely ad-free, giving you stories to escape into, meditations to steady you and hypnosis to help you switch off. 30 days gives you space to try something different and find your own rhythm at night. This extended trial ends on March 16th and it won't be available again for some time. So if this feels like the right moment to take your night seriously, tap Try Free and Apple Podcasts or use the link in the show notes before the weekend. There's no better week to choose rest. I'll be here when you're ready. Welcome back to Night Falls, the bedtime show of classic and original stories designed to guide you into a calm and peaceful sleep. I'm Jeffrey, and tonight. I'd like to tell you about the New Year's Eve I enjoyed here in Night Falls this year, and about all that it taught me. First though, I'd like to wish a happy New Year's to all of you. I hope the holiday season has brought you warmth and happiness and good rewarding rest. Now, let's begin. It seemed safe to assume that the New Year would welcome with it a new moon. For as I gazed out at the sky on the eve of the New Year, the moon was full-faced and beaming brightly. I like to imagine sometimes that the earth is simply caught between the sun and moon, and night and day are in truth the result of a long, lazy dispute that the two old friends have been caught up in for millions of years. For this reason, the sun had offered the moon its light, its warmth, and day by day the moon grew bigger and brighter until the sun could see its smiling back at her in thanks. Perhaps when the sun saw the people of our planet gazing up at the full-faced silver moon in such adoration, jealousy flared in its core. Perhaps the sun could only tolerate our floundering devotion to it for so long, say thirty days give or take. Then, unable to dispel the notion that the moon might begin to outshine it, the sun thrust its companion back into darkness, and would do so every thirty days into eternity. If indeed that were the truth, which I very much doubt it to be, I couldn't complain. Though I loved nights like that one, where the moon turned even the soft sands of the beach silver, I was just as fond of the deepening darkness that awaited my friends and I on either side of the moon's fullest face. Devani had already set to bed, keen to start the new year with her best food forward. She was perhaps the only person on you capable of rushing toward the great unknown with her eyes closed shut and she snored softly on the beach. Everything about her was front-footed. The set of her shoulders spoke of someone ready, willing and excited for whatever the future might bring. I had learned much from Devani, that last year dropped off on me in a million different ways, but I still tended to be a little more reflective than she was. I think I found it harder than she did to pick my feet up and leave the past behind me. I think I still do now in truth. There was no melancholy in me that night, no malice, no great wrong, I couldn't let go of it. My troubles were derived of rather the opposite. That year in Nightfalls had been a perfect one, the greatest in my life so far. As I stood on the precipice of the next year and waited for time to nudge me into the next chapter along with it, I found myself rather reluctant to let go, and maybe even a little afraid that things might never be that perfect again. Lyra and Wanda had disappeared home to their cottage hours earlier, keen to spend the stroke of midnight tucked up together before the fireside. Also watched over Devani as she slept. She didn't need him to, but I rather liked the sense of duty he felt towards my friends and I. It was hard to marry the image of the dog that stole my socks from the washing line each morning and stumbled through the thicket carrying a stick that was much too heavy for him every other week with the one before me that new year's eve who seemed to fancy himself as something of a guard dog. I made my way across the clearing, leaving Devani sound asleep on the beach as I tried carefully around the edge of the lake, taking care not to get my boots wet. Every once in a while I turned back toward the campfire, toward the sands where Devani drifted deeper and deeper into slumber and noticed Otto doing his best to catch my eye. Panting softly, tail wagging high behind him. Otto seemed keen for me to notice him watching over our favourite person whilst she slept. Good boy, he's got a waggy tail. As I made my way further across the clearing however, I got the sense he was looking at me more as if to say, get back here and lie down so I can go to sleep too. I tried my best to ignore him and out of the corner of my eye saw him battling with himself over whether to let out a bark. He could bark and get my attention but that might wake Devani and that would defeat the whole point of the exercise to make sure nothing and no one disturbed her in her sleep. I smiled to myself before relieving him of his duty. She'll be alright Otto. Good boy, I called across the lake. The Schneuser didn't seem at all pleased with the switching of our nightly routine but, nevertheless, came to settle on Devani's toes. I could see one of his eyes winning the battle to stay open and the other drooping shut as though gravity itself were trying to tug Otto into a slumber of his own. I made my way around the water's edge for the final time that year, safe in the knowledge that the greatest threat to Devani sleeping alone on the beach that night was Otto's drool going all over her socks when he did fall asleep. Even after hundreds of nights spent on its silent banks, the way the moonlight caught the lake and the stars shimmered on its surface. Still took my breath away. It was still the night sky had dripped, dripped, dang the hillsides and collected in the basin of the clearing to form the lake. When the moon cast across it like that, I liked to imagine myself running a hand through it and pulling lost stars from the water only to restore them to the sky above. I wasn't sure where I was headed that night but the end of the year often left me restless. Just like Devani, I was excited to welcome the next lap around the sun and even more excited to spend my future with her. But I think perhaps I needed a little time to process the one that had passed and to take stock of all I had learned from it. I am boiled through the ravine, picking expertly through the rocks I knew to rest just beneath the surface. It was starting to feel as though I knew night falls better than I did the back of my hand. I knew where the thicket was much too thick to pick through and where the rug gaps in the vines my friends and I could climb through. I knew which berries I could eat, which berries I could but didn't want to eat. And which berries I definitely shouldn't eat. I knew where to find fresh mushrooms and which patch of the pine forest to take out old truffle hunting. Yum. That year I had discovered all six of Lyra's secret herb gardens, the one she denied having any knowledge of, but always seemed a little grumpier the morning after I had picked from them without making mention of my plans to her. Even in the relative dark of that evening, I knew I was nearing her cottage. For the warmth of the enchantment she had cast over her gardens to keep the flowers smelling sweet, wrapped around me. And the summer she insisted on, softened the ground beneath my feet, the tension in my shoulders eased. It was as though they had squared off to contest the bitter cold of that winter, only to be soothed by the soft summer heat that surrounded Lyra's cottage. Lyra's queen to-bowd might have been entirely shrouded by the dark of night at her hearth not being burning bright. I could see her and Wanda through the window. Before the firelight, the pair were cozyed up together on a sofa I had never seen Lyra use before. She and Wanda dozed side by side, sleeping their way from one year to the next. Two cups of tea had been left to go cold on the coffee table before them, and the book Wanda had been reading was still split open on her lap as she snored softly. And her glasses slipped farther and farther down the bridge of her nose. I had thought perhaps to call in on them and wish them a happy new year, but they seemed too close. So peaceful resting side by side that I felt almost as though I would have been intruding. And certainly, like I might have been interrupting something important. I shrunk back into the thick of the forest just as Wanda stirred from her slumber, snuggled a little closer to Lyra, and a soft smile crept its way into my dear old friend's face, even as she continued to snore. I walked onward past Lyra's clearing and up the next hillside towards the grassy plains I'd first traipsed across on my return to nightfalls. I didn't know what I'd been searching for back then. Perhaps it was an adventure I sought, something to cut through the droning hum drum I'd gotten a little too settled in. Perhaps I simply sought somewhere familiar, somewhere I would feel safe enough to let my guard down again. When I reached the plains that led up to the mountain peak, it took pause for a moment. I'd grown used to hiking up the steep hillsides, and knew it wasn't pushing myself up the incline that had taken my breath away. Rather the view when I looked up from the top. The mountain peak had been transformed by the snowfall. The soft green grass I had padded across when I first returned to nightfalls, and the bright, blooming wildflowers I had taken care not to step upon in the same heavy boots that had been tempered, quieted by the cooling, calming presence of winter. If summer brought on life in its thickest, fullest sense, then the winter that froze over the mountain tops that December was stillness. It was silence itself. The sound of silence was almost noisy and definitely intoxicating. The mountains felt even more and moving than usual as I ambled up the final stretch to the summit. That deep into the bitter cold of winter, my friends and I longed to feel the summer sun against our skin. But as I marked the difference in the landscape that night, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps the harsher season had been exactly what we needed. Winter had forced us into a hibernation of sorts. The snow had left us a little option but to laze beside the campfire. Boogs in hand, and past hours making elaborate dinners, we would never have made the time for otherwise. In the summer there was far too much swimming and exploring to be done each day to sleep all morning, or take a nap after lunch. When I finally crusted the mountain top, feeling rather disheveled from the hike and with snowflakes clinging to my bootlaces, I couldn't help but feel rather grateful for the version of me that had first pieced across the ridge, connecting the north facing side of the mountain to the south. I like all the best people I know he was failed and flawed, fearful and fearless. To him, those traits didn't seem half as admirable as they do to me now. I tried to remember what it felt like when every twist in life's path felt like a failure. It wasn't until I found myself in nightfalls that I learned failing. More often than not, it's the opportunity of a lifetime in disguise. It was an opportunity to learn, to grow, to move in a different direction. I drew a deep breath in and out on that mountain top and found myself feeling rather grateful to the path of life for revealing options and opportunities to me in abundance. Once I would never have considered on my own, once that flowed to me in a way I might have been tempted to ignore. To bypass, had they not almost always been presented to me in the moments just after I realized I had driven myself towards a dead end. I wish I could have told that version of myself that it the foods of the hillside, life's greatest lessons, the love of my life, the most fantastic friends one could ever hope to make and more magic than I could ever have imagined. Waited for me. But as I drew a deep breath in that night, I stood on the fact that there are some things even good things that one simply isn't ready to hear. I'd come to believe that the magic and indeed the universe beyond had saved the greatest blessings in my life for the moment I would truly be able to cherish them. It would have been impossible to believe before, impossible to accept the notion that to have everything I could ever have wanted in my life, all I really needed to do was wait. To be patient was to find a way to be okay on my own. To enjoy the journey that drew me nearer and nearer to Devani each day. I pulled my thoughts and eventually my body back to night falls with every setting of the sun and deep dream that drifted my way. I breathed deep in through my nose and out through my mouth. As my thoughts floated back to Devani on the beach, I wondered what might have happened had our paths crossed earlier. Perhaps we would have fit together just as well as we do, or perhaps our meeting at precisely the right time in the perfect place was the biggest blessing of my life. The moon had hoisted itself high in the sky and raised the glistening stars with it. Up on the mountain top with the heavens lifted, I felt I had space to breathe a little deeper, to simply be. I found myself lying back, settling into the soft snow, engaging up at the stars that my hood up and my coat wrapped around me, staving off the chill of winter. Gravity pulled me deeper and deeper still into the soft snow, and even as I sunk and settled into it, I felt as though I was floating, anchored up amongst the stars and yet entirely adrift. The mountain top was quiet, quiet enough that I felt sure with each deep breath I took, I could hear it breathing with me. On every inhale I saw what I felt the ground beneath me shifting a little. Expanding just like my lungs, I thought I felt the mountain peak stretching a little closer to the heavens. With my every out breath I felt lighter, the year that had passed had been perhaps the greatest of my life, and even then it felt good to let go of it. They told us as children that school would be the best years of our lives, and that we ought to make the most of them. But in my twenties I learned that that simply couldn't have been the case. Then I thought with my newfound freedom that my twenties would be the greatest decade of my life. But when my thirties ruled around and the things that worried me as a young man ceased to be of concern, I began to think that my third decade would be even better. In many ways my thirties had been carefree. I had just the same freedom as I enjoyed at 25, but I liked myself a little more. Turning 40, not only did I like myself even more, but I no longer cared whether others did or didn't. Sometimes I think perhaps I knew better as a boy. Before I tried on layers and layers of being socially acceptable, amenable and palatable, I had devoted years to what others told me was right, was just, was impressive or clever, and lying on that mountain top I prepared to let it all go. I finally felt ready to let it drain from me, down the hillside into the ravine, then the river, and out of the mountain range far far away, so I could get back to that boy. The one who never listened, who did and said what he thought best, who had an answer for everything, who followed up on his own interests, and never ever once worried about being too much trouble. If anything, he aimed to be trouble, mourning, noon and night. He went to tremendous lengths to kick up enough fuss over the things he wanted, and never compromised or minimized his dreams. I pictured him then, the light in his eyes, the scruff of his hair, albeit in a bull cut, the school trousers that crept higher and higher up his ankles as he grew a little taller each month. I made a note to consult him in any future decision making. Suddenly I didn't care to impress, to warn, to please, to appear as people might have liked me to, and the mountains seemed to call to me. The magic of nightfalls too. Coming back to the falls felt like the first thing I had done simply for myself in a long, long time. I breathed deep and sighed out in relief as I let the layers peel away, allowing the people I had been and the traits I tried on over the years to finally fall from my shoulders. How many decisions do we make just for ourselves? I wondered aloud. And lying atop that mountain I decided that perhaps we all owed ourselves a few more selfish decisions. The singular decision I had made with only myself in mind in the last thirty years that led to the greatest blessing in my life. It seemed to me that the more honest I was with myself about what I truly wanted, the better life got. As I lay there relaxing, the sun began to rise on the new year. They asked myself, as no doubt you have asked yourself, what do I want out of life next? What else am I ready to let go of?
