In Love With Sadness

Sadness is so seductive, intimate, familiar. I've lived with it a long time. It envelopes you in a warm coat of longing. Sadness allows you to be tender and vulnerable without being revealing. Sadness allows you to hide, to turn the tears inward even as you have to face the world. It’s like a secret you never have to share. Sadness has a seductive quality because it’s a shape shifter. It can make one seem coolly aloof, edgy, cynical even. There’s an air though that hangs around you that a few people can smell and recognize. Look closer and you can see the frayed edges. The chewed over memories. Repressed emotions. Frustrated ideas Mountains of regret Water logged thoughts of “what ifs” Sadness can rock you to sleep. It can be your companion in the midst of a thousand souls. You can turn to it at night or the middle of the day but it’s best to indulge it during a thunderstorm. Sadness never really leaves you. It serves as a platform for everything you do or as an oasis for long forgotten dreams. It doesn’t sit in the heart as much as it sits on the heart. A heavy weight. Like clouds filled with rain that never drops. I’ve learned to live with it. We’ve come to some sort of agreement. Sometimes I completely indulge it and let it press on me as hard as it can until I’m paralyzed. Or let it keep me in bed, under the covers. But other times it gets small and rolls into a corner. Disappears for a while and lets me play in the light. That is our dance. From shadow to light and back again. One two three, step