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 When I was going through the divorce – nearly a decade ago (if you can believe that shit), I unpublished all the stuff that I had once written.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.