Whose Sadness Is This?
Illustration by Aude Nasr.
A sadness that is nestled deep down within you, wrapped with a melancholy, born with you as though your twin, stuck to you as though a piece of yourself, predicting, even anticipating, a tragedy that’s not yet happened.
A reaction to an action that’s never happened—or at least you didn’t notice its occurrence. A connection, an empathy, with all tragedies that exist as though you’ve been through them all.
Your body tells you stories of despair, of running away from pain, of enduring it, of heat against the soul that the body aches along with. A story of loss and love and anguish, of displacement within the self, of displacement within a world that constantly spins and is never wholly still.
A sadness that whispers to you, then screams at you, then sobs with you, and then hushes you to calm—so fleeting it’s almost an illusion, but so intense it’s almost the only reality.
How do you reckon with a force that asks more of you than you have to give?
Is there, in another continuum, perhaps one parallel to yours, a version of yourself in despair, shedding layers of itself forcedly, and so you too have to shed those layers in sync? Is there, perhaps in another continuum, one parallel to yours, a version of yourself passing through tribulations, and you must, you have to, keep up or else you will both tire and one of you will lose the fight?
If not, then whose sadness is this? When do you claim it your own? Do you claim it your own?
Are we all born with a gaping sadness, intuitively aware of the tragedies of our collective existence, the brokenness telling us that hope is synonymous with survival and that empathy is both a weapon for us and against us?
Are we all born vulnerable to insurmountable melancholy and insurmountable hope and only the brave amongst us know which one to choose? ◆