Thankful

I’ve been in another depressive phase. It came in like a slow tide, creeping in with winter, settling into my bones, making a home in the shadows. It happens every year, and every year, if I’m not completely drowning, I convince myself that I’m fine. But winter fine isn’t fine at all. It’s isolation. It’s silence. It’s a dull, gray hum in the back of my mind. It’s exhaustion so deep that even sleep doesn’t touch it. It’s moving through the world like a ghost of myself, watching everything happen while feeling like I am stuck beneath glass, unable to reach out, unable to connect. It’s doing the bare minimum to survive and calling that enough.

And so I wait. I wait for the light to come back, for my mind to wake up, for my body to stop feeling like it’s made of lead. I wait for the world to feel less sharp, for the noise in my head to quiet, for the weight of it all to lift even a little. I know this rhythm, this cycle. I have lived through it so many times, and yet, each time it drags me under, it feels like it might be the one that never lets me go.

But then one day, the sun stays a little longer. It lingers at the edges of the afternoon, stretching shadows out thinner, warming pavement, softening the cold edges of the world. It sneaks into my room in the morning, slipping through the blinds, whispering wake up…wake up…I don’t feel better right away, but something inside my brain shifts. My limbs feel less heavy. My mind clears just enough to let in a sliver of something lighter. The simplest things—getting out of bed, making coffee, taking a shower—become possible again. And then, easier. I start to move. I start to want.

It isn’t immediate. It never is. I climb out slowly, carefully, the way you’d step onto solid ground if you’d been lost at sea. The depression doesn’t vanish, but it loosens its grip. I breathe without effort. I go outside and feel the air on my face, and instead of shrinking from the world, I lean into it. And in these small moments, I remember what it feels like to be alive.

Depression drags, but light returns. It always does. And when it does, gratitude floods in. Gratitude for warmth on my skin. For the wind sneaking through the cracks of morning. For the hush of a friend’s voice saying I hear you. For the song that soothes my soul in just the right way. For the headlights stretching long down an empty road. For the sound of laughter, deep and real, after months of silence.

I have spent so much of my life in these cycles, in this push and pull between darkness and light. I have learned to hold on, to cling to the small mercies, to remind myself that even in the hardest seasons, this is not forever. I have learned to find gratitude not just in the ease of spring and summer, but even in the depths of winter—because surviving, even just surviving, is something to be grateful for.

So today, I sit in the sun. Let it seep into my skin. Let it fill the cracks that winter left behind. I close my eyes and breathe in the warmth, and I remind myself of all the things that keep me here: the wind against my face, the scent of coffee in the morning, the weight of a book in my hands, the sound of music drifting through an open window, the knowledge that even when I am at my lowest, I am not alone.

Thankful for hands that still move, for words that still spill, for laughter that still rises from the belly. The world is wild and fast and cruel and beautiful, and I am grateful to be in it.