Sadness All Around

It's the holiday season, time for happiness and cheer, right? Well, maybe not for everyone. I know I find it hard lately to find more than a fleeting glimpse of the cheer I once felt this time of year. Instead, I feel the dark hold of sadness creeping in on me, on my mood, and into my soul.

I look for happiness everywhere I can: music, art, companionship, quiet, hobbies, writing, the future, and the past. I look so hard, and I do find a little happiness and cheer... a very little bit. It feels almost as if it is more work to feel happy than it is to feel the cold, dark, grip of sadness this season. It shouldn't be this way, but it is.

I feel the disregard for my health from a work who could care less whether I live or die tomorrow, only that they have what they want. I feel the distant judgment of family I once thought so compassionate. I feel the gleeful ignorance of a once-love who now seems more at peace to cause pain through feigned ignorance. I feel the absence of my son who I can't be near this time of year... yet again.

I do feel happiness, don't get me wrong about it all. I feel the friendship of those who know the struggle it is to work for those who don't care. I feel the support of one who used to never be there. I feel the absolute love of one I wished I had met much longer ago. All this helps so much more than any of them might ever guess.

Yet I still feel the tight grip of this dark sadness creeping into my very being, pulling me down into a dark pit, trying to consume any and every bit of happiness and love I might feel this year. I fight, oh do I fight, but it never seems enough to battle out of the darkness completely.

So I sit here sipping a beer, sometimes a whisky, and hope to feel something... something more than the darkness. I know the alcohol has no intention of helping me through any of this. I also know that it deadens at least some of the pain, even if it makes other pain more apparent, but I don't care. I want the pain to come out. I want to feel something. I want to cry and shake and collapse... but I can't.

Sure, I shed a few tears now and then when thoughts creep in and I'm alone. I cry now and then. I collapse in private in the shower, on the drive home, or when only the pets are there to see, but never can I seem to fully let go. Never do I seem able to let go with the one I care so very much about and want to share everything... but can't. Even when I'm alone with no threat of discovery can I seem to push myself to more than a few tears.

I've only broken my barriers down a few times with the ones I love. Even then it took the death of one I cared for or respected greatly to break me down into little more than a shaking boy. So what can I do to push away the darkness? What can I do to let go in the arms of one I love so I can find some healing in those loving arms? I wish I could say, but I fear the answer is... nothing.

This dark sadness is something I've dealt with so long and hidden from so many that while I know those closest to me feel a small bit of it, they still don't fully understand its full darkness. I don't think there will ever be anything I can do to fully break down my barriers. Sure, now and then there will be an event that helps me relieve some of the pain pent up inside my very soul, but to fully clear out the darkness I think will never come.

Maybe it's good to have a little sadness in my life. Maybe it helps give me perspective about those I see and cannot compare to in darkness. Maybe it is a strength that can be used to help those around me, help those who are struggling to find a foothold to help them up, if only a small amount. You see, I've found that no matter how small the light and how great the darkness, the light always helps. It might not make me feel better, but it is something, and I can hope that this something will lead to something greater.

I can't say that everyone will feel better for focusing on a small point of light in their lives, but what can it hurt to try? What can it hurt to see what tomorrow brings and see if you can find some way to add to the pinhole of light in your life? What can it hurt to see if you can turn one foothold toward the light into another, and another?

You never know, maybe one day you'll find that you've climbed out of the darkness, because once we climb out of the darkness we become beacons. Cliché, right? But we become beacons because we've pulled in every little bit of light we could find in our lives and then turned it on those around us. Turned a beacon on those who might be hurting. Those who are going through tough times of their own, and those who need just a small light to help bring them back out of the darkness.

So, I think I'll find some light. I don't know that I'll ever feel completely happy this season, this year, or this decade, but I can try. I can try to get myself better for the most important ones in my life. I can try to be a beacon for those who might need a ray of help in their own dark times. I can try, and so... I will.