Why is it that feeling and thinking is equated so often with sadness and loneliness? Art, music, literature, and poetry – these mediums provide houses for melancholy shades of dark blues. There is a notable romanization of sadness, but how many people really think about why this is instead of just denouncing it as something “bad”. Now, honestly it is probably bad, definitely unhealthy, but it is a tangible thing.
I used to use my sadness, emptiness, loneliness as the basis for how I expressed myself. These waves gave flow to my creativity, gave me something worth expressing and all the ideas and means in the world. Letting these feelings consume my state of being controlled my actions and who I believed myself to be. This darkness would pull me under and I used to equate it in my mind to being submerged in dark water. Like I was floating there, staring up, while the chill would seep through my skin and sink into my bones. It could become so tangible that I swore it was a physical feeling – something that I still experience from time to time. That mindset, that sadness should not be something that I miss. But why are there times when I am lying in my bed do I feel a different kind of emptiness? A longing for feeling in such a depth again, just something to make me feel a shake to my core. Something to inspire me and make me think in more layers then I give myself time for now. When the darkness that inspired the art is dulled, what is left of that art?
One of my favorite poets, Blythe Baird, wrote, “Sometimes, I miss being sick. The grimiest part of me wishes I stayed in that familiar city of grey and mental illness and whatever the opposite of healing is, where there was nothing to laugh about but plenty to write about.” Now by no means is my head filled with daisies and sunshine, I have a wide variety of demons both new and old. But there was something about being so far down the rabbit hole where no one could touch your mind, and you didn’t need to explain. To quote Blythe once more, “I don’t know how to talk about the rabbit hole without accidentally inviting you to follow me down it.” I hope, not that this can be so easily understood, but if other people know the feelings I am talking about that this offers some consolation. We all have our own demons, and sometimes demons can be quite enticing.