I am told that I worry people. Specifically my friends. I have been told on numerous occasions that I shouldn’t be so sad. That I shouldn’t be so depressed. But I am. And so you ask why.
And how exactly does one respond to that? What am I supposed to say? I can only answer with my own questions. Why must I explain myself to you? You always ask why am I so sad. You always want to know why I sigh. You always want me to explain, to tell you what burdens me so. You want an answer. You want an explanation. As though telling you would make any difference. As though you might be able to supply me with the things that would make me happy. But you wouldn’t. I know that. How come you don’t??
Has the thought ever occurred to you that I am sad because that’s just the way I am? Because it’s my nature to be so? Or perhaps that I just choose to be so? Because sadness is the only feeling I have ever known? That as a child elation, happiness, giddiness and every other emotion that children are supposed to feel were lost on me? That those emotions skipped my house as it went around the block??
Has it ever occurred to you that I might be safer in being sad? That I know how fleeting happiness can be and losing it is something I cannot bear to do one more time?
Or that maybe I was never meant to be happy? That maybe happiness is something I’m not supposed to ever feel or know? Have you ever thought, perhaps, that I am one of the chosen few who are never meant to ever know happiness?
Has it ever occurred that what I want is simply something I cannot have? What I long for, what my heart aches for is something I know I cannot ever, in my pathetic existence, know?
You say tell me. You say talking is a therapeutic process. You say it helps. But how? How does concreting what I think to be true help? How does voicing my greatest fear to the world help? It only makes me more vulnerable than I already am.
And so it is my turn to ask the question. WHY??? Why do you not understand that I cannot tell you? That telling you would do no good. That telling you would be self destructive…for me if not for you. That telling you would make my greatest fear true.
