sadness

i am one of those people who walk among us all daily who owns a profound sense of sadness. i picked it up at an early age like a christmas shopper purchasing a piece of luggage. things began happening and my boyhood was interrupted and a darkness settled into my being and now it is simply how i travel. i carry this sadness with me, like a suitcase, everywhere i go.

it colors not only my life but everything i see. where some see bliss, i see ignorance. where some see pomp and circumstance, i see corruption. where some see god, i see the devil.

it is heavy, too, like a designer bag with a fancy ‘s,’ on it to indicate the authenticity of my sadness. as such it is a burden i am ever trying to relieve.

i read to overcome sadness, but it does not help at all. i take in art to overcome my feelings of despondency but the joy of humanity wraps itself in my sadness and becomes a jewel of depression, a lovely and sophisticated complexity and a sadness all the same.

i drink to overcome my sadness. i smoke. i have sex. i masturbate. i thrill seek. i connect with people. i place my trust in morality and act as if karma were as real and tangible as my luggage. i try to be direct. i speak to people openly and honestly and try hard to avoid subterfuge, adhering to the desiderata like a lost sailor on the high sea hugging an inadequate buoy. still, my sadness persists like a blood condition, coursing through me always, coloring my every thought, emotion, activity, and conveying itself out to the world through me not so much as a sadness but as another creation, the product of human and sadness.

it is not that i cannot see happiness or be happiness. it is not that i do not have moments of utter joy or pure ecstasy. it is just that those things exist in a prism called michael. and i am not particularly unique. there are many like me.

some of us do not know we are sad. some express sadness as anger. some of us cannot move. some of us turn the sadness into a great, open space or a maze or a gauzy area, and we get lost in it and we never, ever return.

i suppose the sad are like a fraternity. we move around like everyone else, dealing with what we can as we can. we love like everyone else and we need to be loved. we make mistakes sometimes and we hope for the best always.