When Sad is a Rabbit Hole

Sad is a rabbit hole.

For some people who experience feelings of sadness, it casts a pall over a canvas of normal, to hover for a day or so, and then it leaves.

For others, others that seem untouchable, sadness is the canvas and there are things to be done that cast a pall of normal over it.

Things like drinking cappuccinos.  Taking a walk with a friend.  Making people laugh.  Prescription drugs.  Volunteering. Things like going to work, having conversations, and coming home to go to bed.  Normal things.  Normal things that take more energy, strength, and willpower to accomplish than they should.  Because, for them, sadness is busy, so very busy, gnawing away at every molecule of goodness and light it can consume. It feasts on their energy while draining them of theirs.  Sadness is a greedy bastard.  It's obsessed.  It can never have one.  It keeps gnawing and biting and chewing until its had more than its fair share to slog around your insides like a sticky cloud.

Some people figure out a magic formula that protects them.  Their magic formula works!  It changes their chemistry for hours, days, and if they're extremely devoted to the task of meteorology, years.  They find their recipe to stave off sadness and they are euphoric.  They win their mind back before the sticky cloud makes its way to the tippy tippy top.

But then the formula changes. The cloud is back and working its way up, inch by healthy inch.  Your normal becomes warped.  So unrecognizable.  Off kilter and scary.  Unbelievably so, it is back to square one.  Back to search for things that will cast a pall of normal over their inner landscape of that dastardly cloud.

It's a never-ending cycle for those people who fight to feel "well."  They don't choose their canvas but they sure as hell try to color it pretty every single day.  To distract themselves, to fit in, to counter-attack the storm that is always brewing.  To hide it from others who might think less of them despite their heart not to do so.  Some worry if the cloud is catching.

This type of sadness doesn't have to eat you whole.  It will die trying but one day it will die.

May all of you who find yourselves in the rabbit hole give yourself more time.  More time to create another formula that wards off your storms.  More time to understand your struggles will pay off, are paying off today, are such a gift to others fighting with their heads down.  More time to feel how much you are cherished and needed on this earth.  More time to show others that it can be done.

Your rabbit hole won't spit you out.  You have to keep climbing.

In the U.S., call 1-800-273-8255

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline