Are you feeling sad? I'm feeling sad. Maybe if we share what we know about our sadness, that will help us all
Sometimes sadness arrives in an unexpected way and perhaps all we can do is allow ourselves to feel it, and be kind to ourselves until it shifts onwards
I’ve been feeling sad. Really sad, like sitting inside a tightly sealed jar of brown syrup I can’t clearly see out of, and so thick that I can’t move properly, either. I know the world’s going on outside, but for the last few days I’ve been stuck inside my jar. And yesterday has the dubious title as something like the most depressing day of the year, so perhaps you’re feeling like this too?
“Why are you feeling so sad?” someone in my house asked me (There are a lot of us in our house at the moment. Heavy snow meant the younger kids were sent home from school for two days back after Christmas, and Jimmy and Dolly are staying, and Dolly’s boyfriend Luke too, so there’s always several people in every room, sometimes even the bathroom). I looked at them and didn’t know what to say. When they’d come into my room, I’d hidden my phone amongst the duvet, burying the Instagram feed I was scrolling, horrified as I watched flames destroy neighbourhoods and communities in LA. The horrific scale of the loss was difficult to fathom. And meanwhile outside my window in Washington DC, a siren screeched past heading down Connecticut Avenue, which leads down to the National Mall, where Trump will be inaugurated in less than ten days time. My sister, who died five years ago, was still dead, and would be dead forever.
Why was I feeling sad? How could I not be feeling it?
I know I am not alone. Far, far from it. I don’t know anyone who isn’t feeling shocked, subdued, scared and very, very sad, right now. And this heavy, syrupy sense of sadness I’ve found myself in this week is a familiar place to be. I know this place. It’s not purely a reflection of the world right now. Decades before the world started burning and social media started fragmenting society, sadness was with me. It’s been part of my life since I was a child, and depression has been there, in cloudy grey patches, all through my adult life. This fact alone can easily become yet another reason to beat myself, but at the moment I’m really trying not to judge myself for the way I’m feeling. After all, if this was happening to someone else - to you for example - I wouldn’t, for a single second, judge you for feeling sad, or want to beat you because your heart felt cracked; I’d want to comfort you, to hear you speak while you tried to put words around your feelings, and I’d give your arm a little rub or even pull you into my arms and hug you and tell you something gentle.
So instead of berating myself, I’m trying to treat myself with this same sense of care, and today I want to write something for you about sadness and what I might do about it. And I’d love you to share your feelings about sadness in the comments too. I’m absolutely certain that by talking about it in this virtual, but very real, space, we can help each other.