The Healing Rays Of The Sun

Art can be very healing. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the fact that I started the day drawing, it was actually the first blog post I wrote today, or rather I wrote most of it, but it for some reason took me more down than up. The drawing was all done in blue, my “Blue Period” as it were, and today it was not helping. My best friend Jeff made one of his out of the blue calls and asked me what was wrong. He sensed that I was going through a bad time. I burst into tears when I heard his voice. We talked for a long time and he was very helpful but finally he said, “You need to get outside, you need to be in the sun. Go outside.” I did, and it changed the whole tenor of my day. I sat outside on my deck for an hour with the sun shining on me and I could feel everything changing. I took the picture above as I sat outside feeling as if everything was changed down to the cellular level. It was transformative.

I tend to cocoon in a way that isn’t good for me when I get depressed. I literally will not move from this chair for whole days except to get the dogs out. I freeze to the spot. I sit in a not very bright room and sink into a state of despair. So unhealthy. And I was so depressed I even said to my daughter Rachel, and to Jeff, that I was afraid I would have to go back on medication for depression, I didn’t want to but this depression has really been taking me down. They both agreed, separately, that I was on quite a bit of medication last year and it still didn’t keep the Mobile Crisis Unit from having to be called. And, too, I am suffering a natural situational depression. I have just lost my beloved Tanner. Medication won’t bring him back. Too, all of the things I have been afraid and depressed about, financial things, all the things I wrote about yesterday, those are very real life issues that need to be dealt with, you can’t medicate them away. These scary financial issues are things that I will have to deal with for the rest of my life. Anti-depressant medications won’t do a darned thing about that. And being more clear-headed off medication, will enable me to better figure out solutions, not being so numbed from medication that I can’t think straight. That would not serve me well. But the sun does wonders.

Sunshine coming through the canopy of trees that overhang the deck…

It was magical outside. Even though I was sitting there on the deck birds came, just several feel away from me, to the feeders. Delilah and Pugsley ambled about the yard and finally lay beside me on the deck and went to sleep in the sun. I think it did all of us good. I came inside, got dressed, and ran over to the little grocery store a couple of minutes from me and got a roast chicken, a head of romaine lettuce and some vine-ripened tomatoes, and brought them home for dinner, eating the chicken legs sitting right in my car. I hadn’t eaten all day. When I got home I gave my wee pugs some bites of chicken and then sat down here to write this post. Sunshine, fresh air, a bit of good food, and my best friend and daughter saw me through. Each day is a singular unit in time to get through. I am making it one day at a time. It sounds so trite but it is absolutely true. Step by step, inch by inch, moment by moment, I am making it.

I will make it a point to be in the sunshine everyday. Not just dash out to plant something and back in, really sit outside and soak it all up. I have to enjoy it while I can. These are beautiful spring days here on the coast but before we know it we will have the ungodly hot days with suffocating humidity and mosquitoes so thick you can barely be outside without being eaten alive. These are the halcyon days of spring and I really need them now. I will bask in their glory.

I still have things to work through and figure out, many things. Rachel and I talked a lot about them last night when she was here. But for now I just need to get through this grief period and make sense of the world without Tanner. It doesn’t seem as though it would be possible to get through these days and yet I know I will. For now I have gotten through this day. Tomorrow is another day. I am grateful for the gifts of this one.