If you are having a hard time, let me tell you a story about how things get better.

One year ago to this day, I left my home and began my journey to the nearest station of the London Underground tube system. I walked to the end of my street with heavy footsteps and took a short bus ride to the train station and on the way there, I felt somewhere else, out of myself, the way you feel when you wake in the middle of the night and are not quite sure where you are for a moment.

I got off the bus and took the escalator down into the station and then climbed the staircase down until I was standing on a platform waiting for the next train due in 4 minutes. As I stood there an overwhelming darkness descended over me and with it a powerful thought that said I had reached my limit. I fought back and negotiated with the darkness and the dark thoughts and we came to an ultimatum.

When the train pulled in, if I didn’t jump in front of it, leaving behind a partner, a child, a dog, neighbours, work colleagues, elderly relatives, divine early morning cups of coffee, the crunch of belgian chocolate, movie nights under a blanket, warm feet on cold newly fitted bedsheets, moments of summer bliss and perfect blue swimming pools, I’d calmly get on the train. For the next 3 minutes I stood in a liminal no man’s land between a man in a suit tapping the platform with his green umbrella and a mother in denim overalls singing a song to her young son. Advertisements on the walls of the underground station promised happy experiences that felt far away. As the rush of wind of the train finally swooshed into the platform and slapped my cheeks and the driver’s face became visible, I thought of everyone I loved and compelled myself to stay frozen to the spot. The train pulled into a halt and the doors snapped open. I stepped inside the train with shaking legs, quite breathless and took a seat.

The darkness immediately wanted a new round of negotiations. It asked that by the end of my 17 minute train journey, I would get off the train and call my doctor’s clinic and make an emergency appointment to go back on antidepressants and if I didn’t do this, because I had done it so many times before and it only ever made things better for a few months, I would instead step into a spiritual experience and for the first time in my life, meet this darkness and its brutal announcement that we had gone to the limit, by not going back to antidepressants and numbness and embarrassing afternoon wipeout naps, and instead find a new way to do this. This being readjusting life so it fit better, served me better, lit up in more meaningful ways, gave a more profound purpose, pulled my attention to the sunlight on the plants and the trees, called out to me on down days with suggestions for self distancing, self care, affirmations, distracting, loving myself and loving those around me better.

The train purred from station to station until we were at my destination. The doors snapped open and I made a decision - there would be no calling the doctor, no going backwards to antidepressants. I moved forwards into the dense crowd crossing the platform to the escalators where I stood behind a woman whose fake fur coat tickled my nose twice as we rose up towards the light of the station. I tapped my bank card to exit the journey and climbed the stairs and stepped out into the icy cold November morning air.

The sun had come out in the time I’d been deep, deep, deep underground negotiating with the bleakest of all darknesses and its radiant yellows and golds cast a positive vote for my decisions en route. Yes, the sun said through its rays. I see you.

I didn’t know yet as I walked off down the street what the announcement of a spiritual experience would mean or look like but I did know I was now in it, the way you step into a forest in Spring and the twigs snap underfoot and you hike outside of normal life inside something bigger, more evolved, more evocative.

A year has now passed since that morning at the station and never a day goes by when I don’t think of the 4 minutes standing on the platform, how 4 minutes inside a lifetime could have ended a whole life. How 4 minutes of hopelessness could have overturned the cart of a year to come where hope would always light the way. We don’t always know where we are going and sometimes we don’t want to carry on but there is always a bright lantern that calls us out of the darkness even if you have to squint and squint and squint again to see it. And when you do, you find the strength to step onto the train and take a seat. You find the strength to end the journey not calling your doctor as you have always done. You find the strength to open yourself to being guided in a new way.

It is the announcement of a spiritual experience and you will know it when it comes for you, for the rays of a sun that was not there before suddenly appear and warm your cheeks.