Lately, I’ve been thinking about the strange ways sadness finds me, especially in moments when I have every reason to be happy. I can laugh until my stomach hurts, leave a conversation with a smile I didn’t plan on wearing, or catch myself looking forward to something as ordinary as seeing someone again. And yet, somewhere between the happiness and the walk home, my mind finds a way to sabotage every feeling I had.
It’s almost as if I’m waiting for the feeling to change, as though I don’t quite trust a good moment to stay good.
Earlier this week, I asked myself a question I haven’t been able to shake: Why does sadness seem to follow so many romantic experiences? Sometimes, before anything has even happened.
I’ve noticed how quickly excitement can turn into uncertainty. I have a good conversation, share prolonged laughs, and let myself wonder whether there might be something there.
Then come the questions.
Did I imagine it? Did it mean anything? Why am I already thinking about something that hasn’t even happened?
A moment that made me happy becomes something I have to dissect, and suddenly, I’m no longer enjoying it. I’m trying to figure out what comes next. I begin looking at my life from an outside perspective.
I genuinely wonder when I started doing that.
Maybe it’s the stories I’ve grown up with, the songs I listen to repeatedly, or the way romance is so often presented as something beautiful because it hurts. I’m familiar with the longing, the almost, the feeling of wanting something without knowing whether it’ll ever be mine. I’ve learned how to make a joke out of disappointment, how to turn uncertainty into a story, and inevitably how to carry a feeling around without ever quite admitting to myself how much space it takes up.
Sometimes, I wonder whether I’ve become so accustomed to the sadness that I expect it before I have any reason to.
Part of it, I think, is where I am in my own life. I’m at an age when so much seems to happen all at once, when relationships begin and end, and when people discover what they want and who they want it with. I can be happy for the people around me and still feel a little ache for the experiences I haven’t had in the way I’ve imagined them. I’ve discovered that both feelings can coexist at once. I don’t need to resent someone else’s happiness to acknowledge that I’m still figuring out my own.
I think I’ve spent a lot of time imagining what it would feel like to have a story of my own. Not necessarily a grand love or some cinematic declaration, but the quieter things. Having someone to talk about my day with, feeling wanted without having to wonder, and allowing myself to be excited without immediately searching for a reason not to be. I want to experience those things, and sometimes, I get sad that I can’t tell someone what they feel like to me in the way I wish I could.
What bothers me most isn’t even the waiting. It’s how easily that sadness follows me into moments that have nothing to do with sadness. How can I enjoy something for what it is and still turn it into a reminder of what I don’t have? Why do I let the possibility of disappointment take up so much space in a moment that hasn’t disappointed me?
I don’t want every interaction to become a question mark or every flicker of excitement to be an invitation to overthink.
Maybe the sadness isn’t always about another person. Maybe it’s about the distance between where I am and where I thought I would be by now. Sometimes, the smallest moments make that distance feel bigger, too. They remind me that I still hope for things, I still get excited, and I still want something I can’t simply give myself.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with wanting love, or with admitting that its absence can hurt. I just don’t want to keep treating that hurt as an inevitable part of wanting something good. I don’t want to prepare myself for an ending before there’s even been a beginning.
I don’t have an answer to my original question. Maybe I don’t need one just yet, either. Maybe, for now, I can practice letting a moment be what it is without asking it to become something more or preparing myself for it to become something less.
I’d like to let the laughter just fill the silence for once. I’d like to let the excitement be excitement. Most of all, I’d like to let the moments just be enough for a day.
For once, I’d like the happiness to arrive without already grieving its departure.