Do you think you know what sadness is?  What it really feels like?  I was a child, and when my mom left us to pursue her life, I thought I knew.  Sadness was what you felt when you put yourself to bed at night.  I used to tuck my hair neatly around my head and fix my bedding smooth around my eleven-year-old body, and then cross my arms across my chest like a corpse in a casket.  I thought if I was lucky, I would die in the night and my body would be found in a respectable manner.  Sadness made me believe I should go to bed that way every night.  But, I kept waking up…

Then I grew older and discovered sadness had greater depths.  Sadness reminded you that you really had no reason for being.  Your life was really a mistake.  At sixteen I thought you could fake a good life.  I numbed my sadness in various ways.  My grades were excellent.  I looked pretty good, never revealing the ravaging punishment I made my young body endure.  I loved all the lost souls that were sad like me.  I longed to be a part of the lives who seemed to not feel the strangling pain of loss.  Nobody ever talked about their own sadness.

When I entered college, I was a good student and a discreet lover.  I remember so vividly when someone I really did appreciate and care about said, “I love you.”  I quieted the thought with a touch of my finger tips.  It was too much to think about love in my world.

My façade of assurance was convincing.  I came to believe if I had someone to take care of me, to guide me, I could become the good person I was meant to be.  It never occurred to me that I could make choices for myself.

Sadness can become so overwhelming that the music of stillness and the beauty of creation go unnoticed.  You can hide it beneath the rushing hours of your life.  Or tether it for a long time if something miraculous keeps it at bay.  You just have to make that miracle reoccur.  And, I did.  Sixteen years of reproducing miracles to keep me distracted from acknowledging that fraud in the mirror.  But, oh how time has a cruel way of sneaking up on you and throwing your life in your face.  Who are you?  What are you?  Why are you still here?

The impulse to numb yourself is irresistible.  If someone or something can convince you, even for a moment, that you are wonderful, you will chase that delusion.  Then, when you decide its better to be dead than be you, you start to imagine life has another act.  The script was wrong from the start.  Cut!  Start over.

Tragic events cause profound sadness.  Many courageous, remarkable people endured tragedies such as you have never seen and you have to wonder why you can’t get a handle on your own unremarkable life.  You can’t change where you have come from, you can only change the direction you take now.  Sadness ultimately brings you to a crossroad.  Give up and perish or follow a path that you imagine you’d take if you had a purpose…  If you had a choice…  Choose.