Letting the Sun In

Once upon a sunny day, I finally acknowledged the existence (and the presence) of seasonal depression in my life. For months, I had grown tired of the endless comments about the cold whenever I mentioned moving to Toronto, and while I often rolled my eyes or laughed it off, those little remarks somehow managed to irritate me more than I cared to admit.

I adore the snow, the way it blankets the city in a serene white landscape after a snowfall, but even that joy became fleeting, redundant, as the novelty wore off and every venture outside felt like a task, layered under coats and jackets until I felt no less than a penguin trudging through the cold.

Simultaneously, walks had always been my lifeline, a small escape from the suffocating weight of my own thoughts, a way to reclaim a little clarity when the room felt too heavy and the mind too loud, yet winter, in all its pristine beauty, seemed to steal that refuge from me, exchanging the serene, snow-covered streets for the quiet of my own unrest, leaving me to navigate the same cold, layered city with a mind just as tangled as ever.

This morning, groggy and frustrated, nursing a headache that refused to relent even after hours of sleep and medicine, I stepped outside without my super puff, and the world suddenly felt different. For the past four and a half months, I had worn that thing nearly every day, and in that moment, the sun hitting my skin, the warmth settling into my chest, the liberation of shedding a layer that had felt almost permanent, I realized how much even small comforts, or their absence, shape our moods and our perception of life.

Walking through campus, I was transported back to past Ayra’s shoes, exploring this same space for the first time, wide-eyed and slightly overwhelmed, and somehow the weather carried the same golden light of my early days in Canada. It was fulfilling, the subtle ease of walking on sidewalks without worrying about slipping on black ice, the sensation of lightness both physical and mental without boots or jackets weighing me down, and the way even an ordinary grocery run could feel like a small adventure, as my best friend and I hopped toward Food Basics, laughing, stopping at parks, sliding down slides we hadn’t touched in years, letting the sun and the little joys melt away the usual heaviness of being a university student.

Happiness doesn’t always arrive in sweeping gestures or life-changing moments; sometimes it is exactly this: noticing the subtle shifts around you, the warmth on your skin, the brightness of a sidewalk, the freedom of leaving behind a heavy coat that has unknowingly weighed on you for months. And in that realization, as I let the warmth of the day settle in, I felt something that felt both fragile and monumental: a reminder that even after long stretches of gray, there is light waiting to reach you, quiet but persistent, and that noticing it, even for a single morning, is enough to make all the burden feel softer, a little less permanent.

Mornelle Court, Scarborough | March 8, 2026