I felt a weight so heavy, I could barely breathe. It dug into my chest and broke my ribs, my bones taking up the space meant to be filled with air. The pain sat in one position right above my heart. It felt embedded in place, unmoving. It made it so difficult to carry out even the simplest of tasks. I would just lie there unable to shift a single limb staring at the ceiling.

Sometimes the weight moved to my throat. During these days, I would stay silent, afraid to speak. With every syllable, the weight would press on my throat strongly, almost as if to silence me completely. The worst days were when the weight settled at the pit of my stomach. I was barely able to inhale one lengthy lung-full of air at a time. This weight left me with a pain quite familiar. And I would just lie there.

The pain tended to be unbearable sometimes. Every thought I possessed felt like a tonne of bricks. 

My hair. One brick.
My body. A hundred bricks
My skin. A thousand bricks
A friend. Ten thousand bricks 

I endured the pain, day after day. 

Sometimes I forgot it was there. On those days, the sun shined a little brighter. On those days, I noticed the stars staring down at me in the evenings and the warm air in the summer mornings. I felt the dust on my skin and the sticky dew on my lips. I heard the rustle of leaves on the nearby trees. My eyes would follow the gliding birds from the roofs of the buildings to the pavement on the side walks. 

It was during these days that I had my sunflower state of mind.

In my sunflower state of mind, time stood still. I didn't navigate through my days with a sense of detachment and removal from reality. In this state of mind, my mind was more aware of the power it possessed, the authority it commanded over my actions, my decisions, my thoughts. I could command the weight off my chest and it would leave. I had the strongest grip on my sense of peace. I had the greatest understanding of the concept of time. I had an even greater understanding of who I was and who I wanted to be. 

Everything just felt easier and lighter in this state of mind. Each minute was followed by a train of uplifting and affirmative thoughts, producing an outward glow that stemmed from what I would describe as a field of sunflowers: radiant with the yellow crowns pointing upwards from the stem to the sky.

In my sunflower state of mind there was peace, there was time and there was me.