The storm only becomes your identity when you forget there was a sky before it.

During a long hard period, it becomes difficult to remember that there was a version of your life before it, and eventually the difficulty starts to feel like the whole description of who you are. That is what makes long trouble so heavy: not just the events but the way it edits your memory of yourself. There was a sky. It has simply been out of view for a while.

Try to keep some contact with the parts of your life that predate the difficulty, whether that is people, places, or things you used to enjoy for no reason. Even small contact helps. It keeps the storm as something happening to you rather than the definition of you.