Hmmm

Yesterday life felt amazing.

The sun came out. By afternoon we were on our friend’s boat on Lake Sammamish with amazing blue skies overhead and Mt. Rainier peaking over the trees in the distance, and although I’m not a fan of boating I just felt on top of the world in that moment. In fact, every time the blue skies come out in Seattle I just feel so amazing inside, and I feel like anything is possible and I appreciate life soooooo much.

But the gray days are worthy too.

I think I was 20 when I started to realize I may have SAD. After an amazing Spring and Summer and Autumn (when it was still 80 degrees in October) where I just felt so happy and alive every day, when the gray skies returned that December and January suddenly I felt so heavy inside. I thought maybe I was homesick (what with being in a small town college hours away from my big city home) and maybe a little lonely (what with most of my friends being back home), and this belief was solidified when my spirits improved immensely as I met more and more friends the second half of the school year and we experienced a warm and sunny spring. Then I came home from school for the summer, and Seattle just had the most amazing weather (like most summers in Seattle), and I was in the best spirits from February all the way through into September that year.

Then the clouds returned. Starting in September, it was a very very rainy year ahead, including record rainfall and generational flooding, and suddenly I felt so very heavy again. Exhausted. I thought maybe I missed my summer job back home, or the friends who’d transferred away between my first and second year away at college, or maybe was suffering a little from my mom’s challenging times she was going through at the time. During that time, I started to withdraw: I exercised a lot, studied even more, and stopped going out as much. I didn’t realize just how much it was the clouds/gray weighing on my spirit.

I’m in my 50s now. I can look at the repeated patterns over the years that I didn’t have the luxury of doing when I was in my early 20s. And every single year I suffer when the weather turns gray. On the outside I seem fine. But on the inside I start feeling heavy. Listless. A little trapped. And then the blue skies return and suddenly I feel like anything is possible again, that everything is just great again.

So yesterday on our friend’s boat, when the sky was so blue and I just felt so amazingly at peace sitting there with my friends, I realized that I need to work on improving my inner spirits (key word: inner, on the outside I seem totally fine 🙂 ) when the weather turns gray. Because the weather is gray soooooooo much in Seattle, at least half the year, which means I’m essentially giving up half my time (life) to struggling inside when the weather turns gray.

Thankfully I’m a fighter. When the chips are low I’ve always been able to persevere. And I’m determined to enjoy the other half of my life too, the one where the skies turn gray. I will persevere. The second half of my life will be sunny times in my soul even when the skies turn gray 🙂 Because every single day of life is worthy, even the cloudy gray days too.