The Sky is Our Truth. The Weather is Our Emotions. Clouds May Come. Wait Long Enough. The Skies will Clear.

This month’s mantra feels like the culmination of a year full of many, very lows. If I were to mark the year from last July, the first low would be the death of a beloved, close friend on July 4th 2022. Like the weather, that one cloud didn’t blow away, only lighten as to make me believe the storm had passed. 

The second, hardest, suffocating cloud was the helplessness one feels as a parent when their child faces challenges you can’t make better. With each cloud, battered by each heartbreak, the only thing I could do was to hold on to what my yoga had taught me…this will pass, like the way the clouds part, allowing the sudden rays of sunlight. I used to believe survival was defined by getting over something. Now I know survival is learning how to endure what may seem unendurable. 

When the clouds seemed heavy, the way they accumulate before the skies split open, the storm announcing itself with drama and fury, holding on to the belief they wouldn’t darken my days forever was a challenge. If I were being honest. These challenges and dark days would have been enough if I didn’t have the added complication of my mental illness of depression and anxiety disorder. See, when one lives with a disease that is so difficult to quantify, one is on a constant vigil, attenuating whether a low day is the beginning of a deeper descent or merely a low day that everyone faces without worry. You can see how being laid low by the clouds that floated and hovered above was complicated by the unknown workings of my own mind. 

Two years ago, on this island I love so very much, I took to bed for far too many days as the depression I had thought I had beaten took over, reminding me that one doesn’t conquer a chronic illness, and certainly one as complicated as mental illness. Having been ‘good’ for nearly ten years, being pulled under so suddenly was shocking and humbling. Perhaps it was then I understood what the above contra truly meant. 

When I was lying in bed, my body limp, my mind dull, and my emotions brittle as if a slight breeze could break me wide open, the only thing that kept me from succumbing completely to the dark waters below was my grasping for a sign I would, could get better, or better enough to get out of bed. Thankfully the clouds parted just enough for me to get out of bed and take a shower, the first in so many days. With each normal act like showering, going outdoors, eating a meal, staring at the TV, each was a tenuous step away from my disease defining the entirety of my life.  

So, as oppressive as the clouds of this year, I had learned the invaluable lesson that if one endures, each day the clouds will lighten. What will be revealed once the sun filters down may not resemble what had been…sometimes what is lost opens up space for new possibilities. See, my friend is gone, the finality unable to ameliorate. No spiritual mumbo-jumbo can dispel the reality she is gone forever. But, as the sunlight revealed, her absence has been replaced by the preciousness of having had her in my life and the understanding her love is still with me now.