Dancing in the Rain

The other weekend I took two days for myself: no work, no housework, no drama. I spent the days with one of my closest friends. He has been through a fair share of struggles himself and has been at my side for many of my own. The best thing though is that on those rare occasions that we are together we don’t talk about them. We don’t talk about our past or what we hope for our futures. We enjoy the moment and we just are.

And that is exactly what I did these two days we spent together. We spent the day in the sun and the night at a karaoke bar. On our way to the karaoke bar it suddenly started raining. But not just any rain, the beautiful warm summer rain on our sun-kissed skin. And we just took our shoes off and started dancing through the streets like we have no care in the world.

When I finally got home at around 4 in the morning I was just about to enter my house when I saw that the sun was about to rise. So instead of going to sleep I decided to sit down by the river and watch the sun rise.

And that’s when it hit me: I got diagnosed with a mental illness about four years ago. I cannot remember a day where I was so carefree like I was those two days. But: I am more than my diagnosis. Looking at the sun rising reminded me that like the sun we rise every day. No matter how sucky the day before was we always get up again. We rise above our pain and struggles.

But I realized something even more important: I am still the same person I was before I got my diagnosis. And so are you. We had our disorder before someone was able to pinpointed it down. So why do we think that a diagnosis is turning us a different person? It isn’t keeping us from being who we are or aspire to be.

The only one that is keeping you from dancing in the summer rain to your favorite song, is you.