IT’S OK TO BE SAD

Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be? Sadness is just another one of our human emotions, and while it may not be the emotion of choice, it’s perfectly fine to experience it.

And I reckon that’s the key. One has to experience, actually experience, all of one’s emotions. Really feel them, and let them run their course. You will find they will eventually run out of puff. If they do not – and you’re always sad, like 24/7, then you have a problem you and should seek professional help. Same as if you’re happy all the time. You’re either retarded, or mentally ill. Get help, brother.

How do I know this? Well, some years ago when my wife became gravely ill – and I do mean gravely – I lost my shit. Utterly. I went howling into a bottomless pit of complete despair. And that is where I lived for more than a year. It was fucking disastrous.

I was experiencing only two emotions – terror and anger. I was terrified of what HAD happened to my wife, what WOULD happen to my wife, what MIGHT happen to my wife, and of course, what would then happen to my son and me.

Of course, life went on around my son and I while Lynette lay in hospital fighting for her life. That’s what life does. It carries on, and you MUST to be able to deal with it. There is no other option. But I was not dealing with it. So, while it’s perfectly fine and normal to experience terror and anger now and again, when those are the ONLY two emotions you’re having, that is not normal. And that ain’t no way to father a kid that’s just started high school and who is perfectly aware of how ill his mum is.

So I went and saw a man. The man helped me. A lot. That was what he did for a living. Emotion was one many things we discussed. His take on my situation struck a deep chord inside me. Well, not initially, but not long after.

“What do you do when you’re gripped by these emotions?” he asked on our first meeting.

“I try to seal them off. I bury the fuckers as quickly as possible, because they make me crazy, and I can’t be crazy and look after my son.”

“Do not do that.” he said. “That’s not the way to deal with what’s happening.”

“OK. I’ll just jump off a building then.”

“Look, our brains are really very good at keeping us sane. It’s what they’re designed to do. And we need to let them do what they do. The emotions you’re experiencing are normal in your circumstances. Bottling them up and pretending they’re not happening is what the issue is.”

“What the fuck?” I blinked at him.

“Emotions cannot physically harm you. They are just things you’re feeling as a consequence of what’s happening. You’re MEANT to feel them. That’s why you have them. So let them run. Let the crazy thoughts that come with those emotions run all the way to the end. It’s just the way your brain is processing what’s happening. When you make an attempt to suppress the emotions, they don’t go away do they?”

“No,” I said. “They just lurk in the background, then come charging out again, even worse than before.”

“You and your brain are not two separate things. You are the same thing. Your brain is you, and you are always on your side. Let it, well, you, do its thing. Feel the emotion, and let the thoughts – good, bad, whatever – run their course. You’ll find they will run out of petrol eventually. As will the emotions that created them. I’ll see you next week. Let me know how it goes.”

I left his rooms thinking he’d just fucked me royally. Let the vicious poison go? Let it burn through my screaming mind without trying to stop it? Fuck the fuck off. Fucken imbecile. Fucken shonk.

And then it dawned on me. I was just hating on him because I was angry and terrified. And I was angry and terrified because I did not know what else to be. So, then I went and sat in a park and spent the next hour or so being very angry and very terrified…and then it all kind of ran out of steam. I’d let the terrible thoughts run their course. I stared into the abyss and it stared back at me…and then it blinked.

See also

Esoterica

1

THE MOST TERRIBLE THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN – PART THREE

23 March 20214

Fucker was right. Thoughts and emotions cannot hurt you. Acting on them can. That’s different. But having them, letting them run their course, that’s utterly benign – and immensely cleansing in a strange way. I did not feel brand new, but I did feel better. Were the thoughts and emotions gone? No. They were still there. But they were not lurking and waiting to pounce. They were maybe re-charging for another shot at the title (and they were), but right then, they weren’t the all-consuming issue they were an hour or so ago.

I wiped the tears from eyes. I had too many tattoos to be seen sobbing in public. This is a huge conflict in my life and always has been. I am a wog. One of them passionate ones. Our wog souls live a little closer to the surface than Anglo-Saxon souls. We like them to be more easily accessible, I guess. And there they always are, just under our veneer of civilised coping and decorum. Lean on them a bit, and out they come.

This brings me to the whole sadness thing. I get sad, just like every one else. The strangest shit can fill my eyes with tears and my heart will ache, and I will let the tears flow and the ache to ache – because there’s nothing wrong with that. It could be a song, it could be smell, it could be a picture of my mum, or my dog, or my son when he was young. It could be riding past a place that has some meaning in my past – it varies. I guess the sadness comes from nostalgia, or from regrets, or from choices I had made or not made. It doesn’t really matter, does it?

What matters that it is sadness – and only sadness – and it passes when I let it run its course. The tears dry up, pretty quickly actually, the ache in my heart/soul subsides, and I get the fuck on with my life. I shoulder the cross I have been given to bear, and I march on.

I guess the point I’m trying to make, probably not very well, because this stuff is hard for me to write about because it’s very personal, is that it’s OK to feel. It’s perfectly normal.

What’s not normal is to supress feelings and emotions. Men don’t cry, right? Bullshit. Men do cry. Some of the hardest men I have ever met cry when there’s a reason to cry. Men should just suck it up and get on with it. And that is also true. They not only should, but they must. But they must also feel whatever they need to feel. And no-one has the right to sit in judgement upon that, or push some kind of bullshit agenda that emotion is a strictly female province.

Feelings and emotions are a human thing. And last I looked, blokes were just as human as ladies.

Let it be, as the Beatles sang all those years ago. Let it be.