If you’re expecting funny, you need to look somewhere else.

I have, as you are more than aware, been extremely sad recently.

I still am.

It’s that kind of sadness that just hits you every now and again throughout the day as you go about your business, thinking that you’re doing alright, holding it all together. 

Then SMACK. It whacks you like a bit of two by four, right in the gut.

It makes everything you do hard work, because all the time, all the time you feel kind of sluggish and a bit grey.  You know that kind of feeling? Almost as if you are sickening for a cold, but you never get it.

It’s exhausting.

This type of sadness oozes up through the cracks in the carapace you erect against the rest of the world.  Every now and again, when something jars the run of the mill, day to day routine you are plodding through, it just explodes. BAM!

And you find yourself weeping, or shouting, or gesticulating, like those crazy people who clutch brown paper wrapped bottles on park benches, and people think you’re insane.

And sometimes, sometimes, so do you.

But you know what?

You’re not insane.

You’re just in the grip of some really profound emotions that are far too big for the body and mind you’re storing them in.

And they have to go somewhere.  Because if they don’t escape that tightly wound net of what people think of as ‘normality’, they stay with you.  Imagine that.  Imagine feeling like that forever.  It already feels like forever, and it’s only been a little while.  Such a small time to feel such big feelings.

It’s a symptom of the age that there is this feeling of guilt at not being ‘better’ yet, or ‘fixed’, or ‘normal’.

When something terrible happens, you have the right to feel sad, and express that sadness any way you see fit, and if more people did it, there would be less lonely, miserable, fucked up mental people in the world and people would live longer and be happier with their lot.

At least, that’s what I think.

The sadness is o.k.  Well, it’s not, but you know.  It’s doable.

The anger is the most confusing.  It just takes the smallest thing to make you furious.  Things that wouldn’t normally bother you make you see red, and things that usually make you angry, make you off the scale psychotic.

I think that this kind of anger is just another face of sadness.  It’s just that it’s much more socially acceptable to get angry than to display grief.  People still see grief as somehow embarrassing, or distasteful, whereas it’s fine to get angry.  When there is an opportunity to release emotion when your psyche is literally drowning in the stuff, you take any route that is offered.  Even if it means the red mist coming down because someone cold called you, or you stubbed your toe.

I have this theory that if you don’t let these feelings out eventually, they eat you alive, from the inside.

And then you really do go mad.

I got quite close to that once. It was not something I ever want to get near to again.

I have to remind myself of this when I find myself getting frustrated because I want to feel better now.

Doing this, feeling this, IS part of getting better.  It’s not a very nice part, but it’s a very necessary part.

I have been thinking about this sadness, trying to figure it out, trying to understand why this thing that has happened, which is really nothing to do with me except in the most tangential of ways, has affected me so deeply.

I think, and I may be completely wrong, that it is actually a very healing and healthy thing. 

When I lost all those babies in the past, I was sad, of course I was.  I was devastated to the point of madness in some cases.  I was also full of guilt, and fear, and anger, and rage and blame.  I was also, while dealing with some of those losses, parenting very small children, working and trying to hold my own in what was an exceptionally complicated and damaging marriage.

To say that the grieving process was muddied would be an understatement.

I have noticed, that in these last weeks, when I have been overtaken by sadness, that is all it is.  I am just sad.  I don’t blame anyone.  I don’t feel guilty.  I don’t want to go on a crusade about it, or point the finger.  I. Just. Feel. Sad.

I think I’m allowed.

I earned it.

I also know that it is not very easy, trying to live a regular life, whilst being this sad.  Everything gets distorted and difficult, and the urge to bottle it all up, and be British and stiff upper lip about it all is very, very alluring.  I know I can do it. I can just slam a lid on it all, and carry on with my day as if everything were fine, and dandy.

I did that before. 

That’s the time I went quite mad.

I won’t do it again.  I won’t do it, even when what I am expressing and feeling makes people uncomfortable and wish that I would go back to being jolly and funny and easy to manage.

I won’t do it, because it’s better to be spiky and tearful, and sad than it is to be mad.

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