The Room With No Windows

I spent a night in a room with no windows.

When picking a place to stay during my travels, having windows or not was never a point of consideration. Most likely because I never encountered an option without one.

Looking for a place to stay in Beijing consisted of a lot of options, including ones without windows. The rooms without windows were cheaper. I figured that was because there’d be no view; people pay more for better views. I didn’t need anything fancy, or a window for that matter, because I would be out all day. All I really needed was a place to sleep.

Entering the room, a wave of depression overcame me. A familiar feeling, but one I hadn’t felt for a while. A feeling of extreme exhaustion. A feeling I would escape by sleeping. In that moment, I figured I was just tired. I didn’t sleep much the night before, spent the early morning travelling and pulling heavy suitcases for 20 minutes along the cobbled streets of Beijing.

I decided to spend the day in this room so that I can catch up on some work, take a meeting and recover from the couple of days on set. I tried to counter that heavy dark feeling by calling a friend and watching a TV show while working. An attempt at filling the dull, empty space with noise and life. Later in the evening I ordered myself a big tub mint ice cream with chocolate chips. A very yummy, but very temporary, relief.

I fell asleep quickly, but waking up in a room with no windows was a feeling I hope I don’t experience again.

Normally, I wake up to natural light. My curtains are rarely drawn. But even on the rare occasions that they are, morning light still seeps between the gaps and spaces. So I always know that the sun has risen. But in a room with no windows, every minute feels like it is midnight. I woke up and checked the time. My first grasp of the time was that it was 6pm. I went back to sleep. I woke up again at 7pm. This time I figured the time it was showing me was wrong and that it must be 3am. I went back to sleep. 20 minutes later, I woke up again. I checked the time, but this time, I gave myself a little more time to settle my eyes on the numbers. Then it hit me that it was 7:20 in the morning, and it has been morning all along. It just didn’t feel like the morning because the sunlight couldn’t seep into my room.

I woke myself up with electric white, artificial light. Did my morning routine and called a friend again. Needed to fill the space with life. The dark feeling was creeping its way back to me. After the call ended, I fell asleep. Previous patterns of trying to escape repeating itself. But the difference this time, is that I have grown. When I woke up an hour later, the old me would have rotted in bed and let those feelings control me. This time, I forced myself to go outside. I knew it would make me regain control of myself and make those feelings go away. And it did. I am currently sitting on a bench in a park at the Temple of Heaven writing this, and looking back at my morning, I do not recognize the person I was in that room.

The main cause for these feelings weren’t because of tiredness, or any of the reasons I might have had in the past, but because there is no window. My first thought as to why that is is because of the circadian rhythm. Without a window, or any sort of access to the world’s full spectrum of natural light, your body couldn’t stay in sync to its’ surrounding environment. Without that access, your body’s circadian clock has nothing to respond to and no signals. When you take that access to natural light away, you take away the one thing your body needs to regulate your sleep-wake cycle. Even though this is already enough of a reason why one should have access to natural light, I still felt there was more to it. So I did some research into how windows affect mental health and wellness.

My thoughts concerning the circadian rhythm were correct, but yes, there are more to windows than that. Exposure to natural light promotes the production of serotonin in the brain, which we all know positively impacts one’s mood. Secondly, looking out a window (depending on the view) can help reduce stress and anxiety. Generally, that second point mostly applies if your view has some nature, but I found that I have enjoyed views that had no nature as well.

Today, I am feeling extremely grateful for windows. I never thought that that was something I would say, but I am glad I have one more thing to be grateful for.

I have 3 nights left in this room with no windows.