Sometimes, sadness is a weight across my shoulders, bending me so that I might break. It’s the drag in my feet one day, my un-showered hair the next. Sadness fills my bed like a lover, calling my name when it knows I have work. Maybe sadness will hold my hand when I walk through hallways to class. The same song played over and over and over. Some days sadness is irritation, or anger. Sadness never holds the door open.
Sometimes, sadness leaves. It pulls the rug out from underneath my feet and leaves me feeling dazed. Is this what it is to feel normal? Did I ever feel like this before? I forget what sadness even looks like.
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When sadness leaves me I ask questions. I have the energy to wonder, how has sadness touched my life?
I think of my parents. My mother, burdened with so much wretched sadness after the death of my grandmother. And my father, with so many friends lost to their own sadness, stolen away from him. Is my father sad, too? I am predisposed to feel this way?
What about my friends? Scores and scores of friends weighed down by sadness. Some know when they are young, and others grow into it. Sometimes the sadness grows around them, swallowing them whole. Some friends hurt themselves, and some hurt others. Some seek help, and some do not. Perhaps a few know the way they feel will end, but others see no end. Is this fate? Were we meant to find each other, to love each other? Did they see me, or my sadness? What did I see in them?
I see myself at fourteen years old, sad for the first time. I wonder, did I know, then? Did I know that feeling would follow me across the threshold of my childhood and into my future? How could I have known?
I wonder still, why do I feel sad? My life has been almost boringly predictable. My parents love me. I have wonderful friends. I get good grades. I am blessed with several jobs. I go to church on Wednesday nights. I haven’t even broken a bone.
I know that, with this kind of sadness, there doesn’t need to be a reason. Maybe my brain just doesn’t work right. But it sure would be nice to have some kind of explanation.
For now, I feel fine. I did my homework, and only took a nap because I had a headache. I drew in my sketchbook just because I had the time. I went to work without dragging my feet.
But when you’re sad, you’re also paranoid. Sylvia Plath depicted depression as a bell jar, suffocating her character, Esther. She wrote, “How did I know that someday—at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere—the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?” I think about this quote every day I’m not sad. Because how do you know? Sadness does what it wants. It doesn’t care.
I know I ask a lot of questions here, and don’t provide a lot of answers. Honestly, I don’t know the answers. All I know is that if sadness doesn’t care, you’ve got to care less. Shit talk sadness to its face. Shake it off your back. Pick up your feet, take a hot shower. Get out of bed, and walk yourself to class. Smile at strangers, at yourself in the mirror. Turn your music on shuffle. Open your own doors.
Fight it.
