A Light Day of the Spirit

For a variety of reasons, last night was a rough night for me. It could be properly categorized as a dark night of the soul. I know that phrase can often refer to a period of time in one's life, one I've ascribed to the year after my Dad died, as one example. But in this case, I'm using it to refer to a single night when I found myself at the crossroads of intersecting despairs, all happening in one single evening.

Sometimes when you feel sad about one thing, you feel sad about all the things. At least, that was the case for me last night.

The rounds of tears kept coming. I was both soothed by the fact that I could scream as loud as I wanted as there was no one here to hear it and at the same time troubled by the fact. When I would find myself calm again, thinking that perhaps I could finally drift off to sleep, another thought of sadness would bubble up and I'd start the process of wailing all over again.

Part of this sadness I'm attributing to having just passed the anniversary of my Dad's passing and for the first time, I'm getting to grieve without numbing some of the feeling with alcohol and cannabis. They were helpful tools for me at the time, but since I've begun my path of sobriety, I feel committed to feeling all the things as they arise. This leads one to feeling things more deeply than previously allowed. By "one" I mean, me. By "more deeply" I mean, almost unbearably. Almost.

When I was resolving to get myself to bed for the promise of sleep, the one thing that could save me from this rollercoaster of intense emotions, I went to lower the temperature on my thermostat as I normally do. That's when I discovered that my A/C wasn't working. It had frozen. The only remedy was to turn it off and allow the pipe to thaw.

So there I laid in air warmer than I'm used to and somehow, eventually, got to sleep.

Sleep can be some of our bodies best medicines.

When I awoke, some of the sadness that plagued me the night before was no longer around. Even the frustration at needing to fix the A/C, which is requiring an amount of energy I haven't had for days, is more of an annoyance that I'm meeting with play rather than feeling plagued.

The sunlight coming through my windows is offering me a since of renewal. My internal reserves seem greater than they have for days. For the first time all week I have a since that I can do this, this being any fill-in-the-blank activity that my day is asking of me. I've been unable to do even the simplest of tasks all week.

So I started thinking, what is the opposite of the Dark Night of the Soul? It must be the Light Day of the Spirit.

That's what I'm living today, the Light Day of the Spirit. Today is the day that my spirit gets to come alive again after being crushed by the weight of grief and despair and turmoil. It's like it's being inflated by a love that is ever renewing. Like the sun. Like the ocean. Like the persistence by which plants grow. I am each of those things. I now know this. I hope to keep remembering. And when I forget, I hope to be reminded.