Untitled.

We all have stories. This is one of mine.

I recall waking up one June morning, already hearing the rain outside. How I missed the summer! Somehow it seems that all the negative thoughts – all the self-doubt, loneliness, and depression – have such ease in gaining power over the mind during the seemingly endless stretch of grey, cold, bitter-wet winter.

It is the last winter, however, that brought and still brings me the most worry. I remember the first mention of that awful diagnosis in my household.
Depression.
In those long, long months as the days lost more colour and all things turned to shades of grey, the darker and more deepening hollowness of my sister grew. It scared me so. It scares me so. Wind, rain, and hail can leave a person drenched, freezing, numb. But my sister was numb without any of these. She would spend her days in bed; my mother spent hers in tears. But what was I, the ‘baby sister’ supposed to do? I remember wishing I could fix it. Praying I could fix it. But the rain kept on falling.

As the days stretched into weeks and into months, I summoned every fibre of strength within me. This was my family, the stitches that held us together were straining and tearing, and all I could do was hold on. I don’t know whether I can say I formed a resolve, or if it was always in me, but somewhere in my childhood I appointed myself as protector. No-one would see me cry. No-one would see my sister if she was. Nothing would hurt my mother. Not while I was there. Not while I am here.

As a fifteen-year-old, this was a hard pretence to keep up. I hid my tears in the dark of my bed at night, longing for a break in the storm. Longing for spring, or summer, where all the joys of life – warmth, holidays, freedom, sunshine – seemed protected, safe and unchangeable. All unpleasantness remained forgotten in those months.

It was naïve to believe in my self-appointed role. Looking back at it now, I still feel the defence, but then I didn’t know my limits. I did not understand. Maybe I still don’t. I analyse and analyse, thinking of what I could have done, what I could do to make my sister better. But that power is not in me. It is in her. And though weather and seasons may parallel the distresses in our minds, it is not in them. For my sister, the illness is as a season of winter. It comes around, and it may feel as if it will never pass. My role is to be strong, but to remind her, as much as myself, spring will come around and again. And eventually, so will summer – days of warmth and joy. Winter can not last forever. Though it affects us deeply and heavily, shocking and surprisingly, horribly and devastatingly; it will pass.