Sadness

Mar 17, 2008 - 13:44 PM PST

I think that everyone has an underlying nature. I think that you would call mine sadness. If you could see it. I don't think many people can and do, although I'm certain sometimes it shines out through my eyes like the brightest Northern star, like those slow-motion moments in a film, where realisation hits the heroine (in my case), and she sinks with something much like life painted across her face.

Sadness cannot shine, you might say to me. Sadness is dull, bleak, dreary. But sadness isn't winter, for me. Sadness is beauty.

I love spring, because it brings so many new beginnings. But I see sadness in spring, too. Night falls in spring: darkness hangs, slithers down the air, with a certain heaviness that tugs at my insides. I sleep in the afternoon, and when I wake up, it's no longer light oustide, and I get that strange, lonely ache in my chest.

I'm not unhappy in my life. I don't spend my days wishing desperately for things I don't have and think I need. There are things that are missing, things that I miss. Obviously. But there is no one reason for the sadness.

Beauty is relative, my dad always says. I disagree. True, what is beautiful to me might be horrible to you: but that is not beauty in itself, it's taste. What do I mean? That if a rose is beautiful, it is beautiful objective to whether it is so to or for me, and to or for you. It is beautiful - fact. I like it - fact. You don't like - fact. Just because it's not beautiful for you, doesn't mean it's not beautiful at all.

Maybe sadness is like beauty, not relative. Or maybe it is relative, and what is sadness for me, is not necessarily so for you. I equate sadness with peace. Sometimes, peace brings no other feelings with it. At other times, like during a sunset in the middle of April, there is that tugging of my heart, that gentle but insistent pull, that echoes all the way up to my throat.

I think you would call it sadness. Sometimes, I do. Sometimes, I have no word for it, because such a strong emotion deserves more respect than language. Maybe it's not such an intrinsic part of me, after all. Maybe if you barely looked, if you glanced at me and walked on, you'd miss it completely.

But if you stop, and you stare, unblinkingly, undressing my soul with your eyes, leaving me naked before you, you'd probably agree that it is sadness.