Sadness

It catches up with you.

Late at night, when you’re alone with your thoughts, and trying to fall asleep, it catches up with you. Just when you thought you got away with it. Just when you thought the day is over and you can finally rest. It catches up with you.

The worst part of your day has just begun. In the silence, your personal demons are awakening. The night won’t save you. Sleep won’t come. Peace of mind evades you no matter how much you long for it. This is their hour and you - their reluctant guest of honor. It won’t help to fight it. You’ll lose. Without question. Rationalizing won’t help. The night is deep and logic and reason have become irrelevant. You are alone. Utterly. Helplessly. Find your voice and scream from the depths of your lungs, but it won’t drown the chaos in your head. Meet your demons. It would do you well to get acquainted with what will be familiar.

Meet your sadness.

Sadness creeps up from behind and chokes you. Slowly. Silently. Deliberately.

From the deepest and darkest recesses of your soul where you tried to suffocate it, it rises above and vents its anger. Sadness avenges itself against you. Accusing you. It derives its strength from your deceit. For every faked smile and hollow laughter you gave, it doubles its strength inside your own dark underworld. Biding its time. Waiting for the perfect moment to pounce when you are alone and there is nothing to shield you. No gay laughter of friends. No drone of lecture in the classroom. No artificial entertainment on the television.

When everything else is taken out, all you have left is Sadness. It is preceded by the empty feeling of void in your heart. It is accompanied by the nagging worries in your mind. Flanked by the hopelessness in your spirit. When you’re at your most vulnerable, it strikes.

Tears eventually follow. But when Sadness is at its strongest and most vindictive, you won’t have the mercy of tears. Being able to cry is merciful. If you’re not able to, all you’re left with is this choking worthlessness vibrating in your core, echoing through your whole being. An open wound stinging with pain but you can’t scream. You can’t do anything. You endure it. You endure it until you can’t take anymore. Even if you’re pushed through your limits, you have no choice but to suck it in.

Sadness is the well-guarded monster you keep inside of yourself and tell nobody about. You feed it by ignoring it. Denying its existence. Convincing yourself that you have it under control. The more you suppress it, the scarier it becomes.

A frown. A knot in the eyebrows. A twinge of loneliness. A feeling of rejection. A lack of escape. A taste of imprisonment. An overwhelming sense of frustration. An infinite ocean of negativity.

The next thing you know, you are fighting for breath. Drowning in your own sea of sorrows. Flailing your arms for rescue. But something pulls you down. You struggle. Gasping for life. But still, something drags you forcefully below. When you look to find out what it is, you find your own self pulling you down. Your smiling, laughing, suppressed double with its fake mirthful face, grabbing you down.

Welcome to your hell. And here is your steward, yourself.