The Sun and I
Just a Small, Positive Action Each Day Helped in My Fight Against Depression
I would never open the curtains. The dull, drabness of an absent sun reflected how I felt inside myself, justifying this chaotic emotion. This drabness wasn’t playing games with me like the sun did, shining bright for no other reason than to taunt me.
An entity named depression sat with me most days leaving scars and wounds and, after a while, I settled into the comfort of sadness, content with curtains closed. Eventually, though, I realized these wounds and scars were growing, spreading, producing ill thoughts, causing a permanent stagnancy to my life.
I had to do something to stop this disease in me.
One day, I decided I would try a little big thing called opening the curtains. Some idea vaguely came to mind that if you keep doing something, it will become routine, and your mind will eventually accept it as truth. Despite the sarcastic laugh echoing through my mind at this notion, I opened the curtains.
Every morning, I shuffled over to the window and pushed apart the shade between me and the outside world. Each time, I gave the sun my usual expression of dislike and resentment, but I continued to greet it every day.
These days drew on uneventfully and it felt like nothing was happening at all, but this wasn’t the truth. I lacked desire for life and yet a tiny dot of feeling began to form in the center of this broken heart of mine. After so long with numbness at the core, I was skeptical of this coming alive feeling, even hated it, and ignored it, but still I kept opening the curtains. I kept standing in the rays of the sun reflecting against me and just for a moment I let it touch me, gifting me with tiny fragments of aliveness every day.
I went about my daily activities, unconsciously glancing out the window throughout the day. I began to admire the sun, began to appreciate how it embraced everything in its path with warmth and brightness, how it ignited the vast sky with its natural, radiant smile. This realization took hold as I witnessed how beautiful the sun’s face was. When days arrived with rain and clouds that stole the sun’s face, I missed it so much that I was frustrated to open the curtains and see an empty sky.
Gradually, that tiny dot of feeling in me flowered into what I realized was hope, for a better me, a better tomorrow, and to see my sunless life come alive again. Hope moved through my broken heart, not enough to heal it, no, it would be many years before that, but enough that my numb expression of dislike at the sun had softened into acceptance.
The next time the sun rose, I realized how important it was to the start of my day, my mood, and eventually, I eliminated the window between us and started leaving the house where I kept myself secluded. Through baby steps I opened myself to experience the sensation of being in the sun’s presence without a barrier.
And so began the friendship between the sun and I.
