A true sadness.

Art by: 9jedit

I have been looking into myself this past month.

After a few weeks of dedication to the task, I have come upon something a little troubling: a well of deep sadness. Not a deep well of sadness, either but very much a well of profound sadness.

It’s hard to admit that this is the result of decluttering my heart and clearing my mind.

But I should have known. I have reached here before, I have come across this precipice and turned my back to it, preferring a mellower life and sweet, honeysuckle days. But whatever I do, I ultimately return to it. Whatever paths I take in life, when it matters most, it is this silent force I encounter.

Should I continue running, turning from it ? Perhaps I can avoid it all my life?

Bu really, what else is there to do but accept it?

This sadness, it’s not fun. It’s not exciting and definitely not what I want. But it’s true. It’s authentic.

And so, it deeply characterises me. I’ve been writing about it, scratching its surface, knocking its door for a long time now. And I think it’s time. I have enough strength that now I can choose a true sadness over a distracting joy. I’ve reached a point now where I can accept whatever this sadness says about me.

I suspect it’s a lot of grief for the world, an idealist’s mourning of injustice. But perhaps there is regret too, resentment.

But I must go there. I must face myself, I must accept who I am, whoever that is. It is the only way, the true way.

I would be lying if I said I was unafraid, if I wasn’t clinging onto old joys, onto materialism and comforting clutter— all those things, really, that I turned to so I could avoid facing that sadness.

I am so scared of losing myself. It is so difficult to surrender, to let these waves of change carry me away —or worse yet—to let them wash over me, carrying away the parts of me they want, keeping the parts they want.

And yet,tremulous as my heart is, it feels right. My heart can stand up to this.

Every path has led to this. Every crossroads, every person I have met, every event and non-event, every stranger I have ever wondered about, every 2 a.m, every night I shivered on the balcony.

Every turn in life has led here. If I back out now, I lose myself again. I wander, no, I err again, uncertain to my core. I drown again in shallowness, chasing moments of infinity forever.

All I fear is touching an energy too raw for me to handle, of stumbling on an emotion too close to my heart.

But wells run deep, I tell myself. Their depths do not spring out of nowhere. It means that as long as I follow this sadness, I get closer to myself.

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Listening to:

This Gentle Sadness: Mono No Aware

There is a gentle sadness about Life. Something about growing and getting old. Because when you grow, you also outgrow and when you live, you also outlive. This gentle sadness courses through all that we touch and are, through all the known and unknown universe. It is a truth we cannot fight. Just like we cannot deny that the sun will rise and set or that the rain will fall. We are witnesses, actors in a play that we ultimately do not decide the end of.

And yet, this affliction, this soft greyness is not too common, I find. Even so, it is a way of viewing the world. A way to find beauty in the dusty city. It settles like a blanket over me, this feeling. During sunsets and in nature, as the midnight fireworks go off, as I stare away into the sky, as the end of our adventures draws near and the quiet reigns.

Often, I am quiet because I think that all this beauty dies one day. I am quiet because I am sad for the world. The one I live in, the one in 10 minutes from now, even the one from eight hundred or eight thousand years ago. It is not a sadness you manufacture, not something you own or create. It is something you find one day when you listen to the world’s stories. And after that, it is always there. It does not mean I am unhappy, no. Just that the world I see goes far beyond the world I live in now. The world I know is a hundred thousand layers deep and counting—always.

Sadness is the state of life and the world. It is a reality you learn to accept as you accept that the planets rotate around the sun and that gravity exists. There is sadness that lasts, and there is nothing to do with it, save for acknowledging it.

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Listening to:

I See You

Art by: France Corbel – traitspourtraits

You.

Yes, you.

I see you, bleary eyed and resigned, the weight of the worlds digging into still soft shoulders. I see this bone-deep ache that you try to hide, this tiredness that has nothing to do with how much you’ve slept or how many hours you’ve worked. I see the disillusion in your eyes, I feel the sadness in your soul when you say: “I’m fine.”.

I see how you can’t eat because the sadness has filled you up or how you can’t stop having junk food because the melancholy has carved out a hole in you that you desperately need to fill. I see you slump into yourself, trying to disappear, drowning in music that speaks to the pain and gives you a moment’s relief. I see how you try, how you want to open up but get cut off because your voice is too soft, and your words trembling with fear. Fear of being discovered, fear of being found. And when you are silent, you fear never being searched for, never being thought of.

God, I see you. I see you. I can’t change the world, and I may not be able to do much for you, but I see you. I do.

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14/10/18  : The 10th of October is World Mental Health Day, and to the people who are struggling, who everyday fight battles no one else can see, I wanted to say at least this much : I see you. I know you are out there, trying your best even now.

Letting Go

Photography Credits: Edward Honaker Photography

And at that moment, he felt like giving in, like letting his body fall back into the eager arms of Darkness.

He could already imagine how delicious it would feel to not be lonely anymore—and who cared really, if his companion, the one to break the curse of all this sadness and melancholy, was a demon? …So long as he had someone, so long as he drove away the maddening loneliness, what did it all matter? Good,bad, dead or alive…

He could already taste the relief on his tongue, could feel the chill of Darkness seep into his bones. Who needed warmth when the cold could numb you over and never make you feel pain?

And just as he was about to let himself go limp in the waiting arms of Darkness…

He stopped.

He had been down this road before, knew what it entailed: momentary comfort in exchange for added pain. It was senseless; no one would agree to it. Yet all the same, it was so tempting to fall into Darkness’s loveless embrace.

But he realised he did not want to be fed to the Darkness. He did not want to help that monster grow and lure in other stray souls into that painless, lifeless vacuum. He did not want to add to numbers that were already so full of grief, did not want the sound of his name to evoke choked gasps ans watery words.

“But he looked so happy.” “He was so young.”

He wanted, he realised, to be as happy as he pretended to be.

As he walked away from the abysses that lied beneath his feet, he thought that perhaps happiness was worth suffering for.