Coexisting with Sadness: What "Doing the Healing Work" Actually Means

I had always heard the catch phrases “you need to the work," “you need to heal," and “you need to let go." For a long time I thought it was all balderdash. What work could I possibly do to help myself out of this mess when I felt so helpless? It just didn’t make sense.

For a long time I didn’t realize I was floating. It was like everything was passing through me and I was letting it. Stress, pain, anger, and frustrations of others, but it wouldn’t leave. It had lodged somewhere in my heart and my brain. I thought they were going into the trash, but I couldn’t be more wrong.

Like a decrepit hoarder, I was storing everything I thought I needed, unbeknown to my conscious mind. After a while I started to feel numb, joy, happiness, anger, excitement, and hope, to name a few; all seemed to have gone on a long vacation. It's funny that even while I thought I was numb, one overwhelming, domineering emotion persisted and colonized my entire world: sadness.

Sadness had been creeping in for years. She attached herself to every memory, every situation, and every hope I once had. SHE was tangy like someone had poured a jar of salt into my food, and I was repulsed by her every morsel. Sadness would whisper when I was asleep and sing to me when I was awake—a cacophony of the most depressing sounds I’d ever heard. Even in times when I thought I was happy, she would spit her venom in my face and laugh at my audacity to reflect joy. I came to fear her, but ironically to be comforted by her. She became so familiar that she was all I knew. 

She must have done something wrong, because my body started to give her up. I couldn’t contain her anymore. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t breathe, and my heart couldn’t beat the same way it should. I anticipated the tears and the anxiety, but I could not anticipate her attacking me so badly that I would violently shake so much like an exorcism that I’d no longer have control of my own body. I’d scream, be restrained, be drugged up, and be admitted everything I could possibly do to gain my independence from her, but she always seemed to hover.

In time, I learned that she’d have to coexist with the others. Where were the others? When were they returning from their long sabbatical? These questions riddled me for a long time while sadness wreaked havoc on my body.

It’s been almost 2 years, and I am slowly getting answers. Healing means allowing the “others” to return, despite sadness still remaining. It has meant crying without fear, laughing without fear, and having hope once again without the fear of nothing coming to fruition. Feeling grief without fear and talking about the past in a safe way no matter the consequences. Perhaps fear was the silent colonizer all along!