I have come to the conclusion that all sadnesses are different, in the matter, depth, constituency, and texture. They have different personalities, whims, and favored’s drinks. Some prefer hard liquor and cigarettes, some drink wine and dance, some cuddle, and others should just be left alone. Thus I validate all ill advice given to me & the ill advice I give to people about their sadness. Is there anything sadder than something well-meant misplaced? Maybe my father is trying to fix an extroverted, always hungry, the kind that can be fixed by buying shiny stuff – kind of sadness, while mine is…well…mine is…extroverted only to people I love. But avoidant of anyone else who may care to help or provide company. It does not open its chat for weeks for the fear of having to talk to a college friend but finds time to fight with mummy and boyfriend every day for not being there enough.
My sadness also looks like loneliness, the kind that is inflicted on itself. It makes me sit on the stairs of a cafe instead of inside with Goan music & friendly people. It has successfully avoided dinner with a friend for 3 months now. My sadness is angry. Raging. It has broken some of my favorite coffee mugs. One had a peacock on it. It is an attention whore. I have been trying to write about Judy Blume’s books, Makar Sankrant, and happy conversations with my best girls, but all I have managed till now are 8 and a half hate letters and a eulogy.
I hope that’s how you understand your sadness, not as an accidental obstacle to life, but as the very substance of being. Stop looking at it as a bug in the system, it is not, it is the system itself. It is when the code runs impeccably that you feel this sadness that was meant to be yours, personalized and unique, fitting like Cinderella’s shoe. The medicines that sedate it or the wine that makes it dance like Govinda are just bugs in the otherwise well-functioning system. And if you can go to someone nice with the fragile pretext of this sadness, please, without knowing what you want to say to them, do to them, what you want to have them say to you or do to you. Be kind to your sadness. Run it dry. Satiate it.