Today I am just sad.

     

I am sorry to admit that it’s been more than a month since my last blog post.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing, I write every day, but with all the mayhem and sadness and ugliness surrounding us right now, I just haven’t been able to put into words anything worth sharing.  What can you say when we live in a country full of sexual deviants and mass murderers and corrupt politicians?  It’s pretty bleak out there.  I’ve been having my share of personal struggles too-a falling out with someone close to me that unfortunately has had a domino effect on my entire life, and my migraines are back with a vengeance (maybe they are stress related after all…).  I've been immersed in all this sadness and I haven't been able to think of anything happy to write about.  Normally I find joy and gratitude in the simple day to day things; hiking and playing music and teaching my toddler classes and lunch with friends, but lately things don’t feel normal. It feels like we are living in an upside down world.  How can I write about my quest for living fiercely when people are losing their homes, lives, and children to devastating disasters and senseless tragedies?

We are all taught from a young age to look for the good in things, the silver lining, the rainbow after the storm. We are taught to look at the glass as half full. We are taught to make lemonade from lemons.  We are taught to pay it forward and help those less fortunate. We are told to let go of negativity, let go of the past, let go of pain. We are sometimes even taught to just ignore the elephant in the room. We all gather around our table at holidays and pretend everything is just as it should be. We are taught to put a smile on our face and power through. None of this has ever come easy for me; I have to work very hard to keep that smile on my face.  I have a colorful bulletin board covered in positive post-it note quotes that I read out loud every morning.  I tell myself that things will always work out, and my favorite post-it reads: “Beautiful beginnings are often disguised as painful endings”.  This is often my daily mantra. The bad things I’ve been through have led me to some pretty amazing stuff, and yet, bad things still keep happening.  I know that my life could be a lot worse, and when I wake up to hear that babies have been killed in church or teenagers have been sexually assaulted or pipelines may have leaked oil over sacred land, well, my problems seem trivial.  When I heard today that a friend has senselessly lost his beautiful young daughter, I think about how everything you know and hold on to can be gone in a second.  What does it matter if I’m mad at a family member or frustrated with my career or battling daily headaches? It really could be so, so much worse. I could not be here at all, or someone I love could be taken from me. My home could be wiped out in a hurricane. I could’ve had that acting career I wanted only to be assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. It could’ve been my friends at that concert in Las Vegas, my niece or nephews at the church or school shootings. I was discussing all of this with my therapist today (Yes, I am in therapy, and No, I’m not ashamed to admit it, and Yes, everyone could benefit from a weekly counseling session), and she pointed out something interesting.  Every time I brought up something bad that’s happened to me, I countered it with a “but it could be worse”.  Or I laughed when I wanted to cry. Or I defended whatever or whoever I was angry at/with.  She reminded me that in therapy it is okay to cry, it’s okay to be mad, it’s okay to see the glass as half empty.  It’s okay to talk about everything that hurts, and no, she does not think I’m just “whining” or that I’m “too sensitive”.  She asked me to take inventory of everything that makes me sad and bring it into our next session.  Wow, that may take a lot longer than our allotted 45 minutes!  Usually I try to make lists of things I’m grateful for and things that make me happy, not sad, so this will be challenging.  We also talked about the ways we all deal with sadness, and most people do bury it, in exercise, substance abuse, bad relationships, over-eating, or in my case, either sleeping all day or shrugging it off as no big deal.  We may think depression and sadness are one and the same, but I think the depression actually comes from not dealing with the sadness.  We all love to post our happy pictures on Facebook and pretend life is just grand, but I wonder what our page would look like if we posted pictures of how we really feel? Can you imagine pictures of everyone binge eating and drinking and yelling at their family or laying in bed with a pillow over their head? LOL. Actually, it might be a fun experiment, just for a day.   

I went to a yoga class a few nights ago, like I do when I need to cleanse out all these bad thoughts, and our instructor told us to think about something we can hold on to, instead of the usual letting go.  There’s that theme again: let go of the bad, let go of the pain, let go of the past, let go of the toxicity. Hold on to goodness and light and hope and courage.  Except, she wasn’t saying that.  She just said, find something you need to hold on to, even if it hurts, and then transcend that feeling into your practice.  So I decided to hold on to my sadness, to see how it feels, to embrace the loneliness and darkness, if only for an hour.  I didn’t really think about the things I’m sad about, I just held the sadness in my heart, and felt grief flow through my veins. I won’t lie, it didn’t feel great, it was not my best practice ever, and I don’t like being sad.  However, I didn’t collapse into a pile of tears on my mat, and afterwards I actually felt a sense of relief. Maybe just the validation in itself, that it’s ok to be sad, made me feel better.  So I am going to let myself be sad and I’m not sorry that this is a sad post.  The sensitivity and sadness are also the things that make us loving, kind, and compassionate. I am going to cry for gun control when there are mass shootings, and I’m going to be angry when people cross me, and I’m going to stand with the victims of sexual assault and feel their pain because I have been there too.  I am going to grieve the falling out I had with someone who shall not be named AS LONG AS I NEED TO, maybe forever (no I will not just let it go). I am going to be sad that life didn’t turn out exactly like I hoped even though it still turned out okay.  I am going to continue to write some sad songs even though my mom thinks they’re “so depressing”. I am not going to deny how I feel.  I am not going to ignore the many elephants in the room.  I am going to let myself feel the sadness, BECAUSE…. underneath that sadness is a feeling that something inside of me is growing and transitioning and I can’t wait to see where it takes me next.  I feel some kind of calling, some potential that has not been reached, and I hope it takes me to a place where I can bring comfort to all the other sad people. 

Yes, it could be worse, but today I am just sad.

Peace, Love, and Namaste,

Sunnie