Not even a little funny

Here I am, writing something sad near the end of the year. It’s like an annual thing now.

Want to hear something funny? This is a humor blog. Well, it was. It started as a humor blog and now it’s like some annual Dear Diary bullshit. I don’t know what it is anymore, really. When I was going through the divorce – nearly a decade ago (if you can believe that shit), I unpublished all the stuff that I had once written. Funny essays on marriage and family life. Most of them are set to private now so no one can see them.

They just didn’t seem very funny anymore.

Sometimes I think the divorce is this huge demarcation between Happy Linda and Sad Linda, but that’s a lie. Happy Linda and Sad Linda coexist – they always have.

The difference is I didn’t feel like I needed to hide so much before. Maybe because in a marriage, we accept the various elements of our spouses, or at least the person I was married to did that for me. Or maybe my darkness is why I’m no longer married. Who knows.

But here I am – going on 9 years since the marriage ended, and the world just wants me to Smile More, Be Grateful. GLASS HALF FULL!!

Yeah. Whatever.

I’m so fucking TIRED of being told I should dismiss my feelings because it could be worse, because I have it better than most.

I know it could be worse. I know I have it better than most. I can be grateful for those things and still be sad and lonely because for nearly a decade, I have lacked a partner in my personal life.

No one to nurse me back to health when I break my arm. No one to hold me when I’m sad or cold. No one to kiss when the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve.

So pardon me if I’m sad about it occasionally; if it wells up and leaks out of my eyes now and then.

I’ll smile more Tuesday. Today, I am sad. Sometimes I’m sad, and if you’re my friend, you can either abide that or get out of my orbit. There isn’t much to abiding it, really. I mean, you can sign up for the Bronze, Silver, or Gold level. The Bronze level is mostly just ignore it. Silver involves some platitudes of understanding. The Gold level includes empathy, real empathy.

None of the levels involve telling me to ignore my feelings, to smile more, to be grateful. None of them. That’s the only thing you can’t do because it turns you into an unsafe person for me, someone I can’t share how I feel with.

I know someone else’s sadness, darkness, can be a burden. I get that. I’m pretty sure that is why I’ve lost people in my life, and I expect I’ll lose more before it’s all over.

But in the end, whoever is still there will know and love the real me, in all my fullness. I’d rather spend the rest of my life alone than faux-smile my way into someone heart.

The sad girl is part of the package.

Yesterday, I let myself be sad.

It doesn’t matter why; that information is irrelevant to this essay. What matters is I didn’t talk myself out of it, or let any (well-meaning) people talk me out of it either.

For 364 days a year, that’s what I do (although, not always very successfully, to be fair). It’s probably what you do, too. But yesterday was my birthday and my birthday is a difficult day for me, moreso in recent years than in the past. This year, as a birthday gift to myself, I decided to honor my feelings, to just feel them, and not push them away or pretend they weren’t there.

I didn’t deny them. I didn’t practice gratefulness or remind myself how lucky I am. The truth is I am lucky, and I am grateful but guess what – even lucky and grateful people get sad.

It doesn’t mean they don’t appreciate all the richness in their lives. It doesn’t mean they aren’t grateful enough. It doesn’t mean that others don’t have it worse or that they need a dose of perspective served up to them.

It’s nobody’s fault that I was sad and it was nobody’s responsibility to un-sad me. I didn’t need to be unsadded, as a matter of fact.

Some days we just need to feel our feelings, even the hard ones.

The Jester

The jester always makes ‘em laugh
Those words will be her epitaph
For reasons none can comprehend,
The jester’s disappeared again

Don’t ask the girl curled up in bed
She can’t even raise her head
She doesn’t know or doesn’t care
Immersed in her hard-won despair

The room is dark, the blinds are drawn
It’s quiet when the laughter’s gone
The jester’s scent clings to its host
The sad girl misses her the most

I appreciate those of you who knew it was my hard day, and who just said “Well, I’ll just be over here quietly letting you be sad.” Thank you for not trying to fix it, because you couldn’t. Thank you for not trying to talk me out of it.

I hope I can be that friend for you too, when you need it. I tend to want to attack problems so it’s hard for me to just sit quietly, but I’m going to work on that.

There is so much support out there for practicing gratefulness – journals and wall-words. Canvas signs and Eastern philosophers. Facebook posts and memes. Where is the support for practicing letting ourselves – and others – feel sadness? Why is sadness hidden away, buried under gratefulness, denied, and sweet-talked into the dark corners of our souls? Is it because we’re afraid of it? Because we don’t know how to handle it, our own or others?

I don’t know those answers, but I’m going to try to honor my feelings of sadness more and hopefully dispel the shame that comes with what is perceived as unearned or undeserved sadness.

I have some news for you. You’d better sit down; this could be hard to hear.

I’ll probably be sad again. It happens – and not just on my birthday. But don’t worry – it always passes and the part of me that is easier to be around will take the wheel soon enough.

Thanks for loving me anyway.