Hello Sadness, take my hand.

Sometimes sadness is a funny thing.

You are busily going through life, making sure everything is hurried and your thoughts rampantly obsessed with something else that you’re not even aware that the bone aching sadness is quite literally latched onto you and weighing you down. Not until you take a moment of space, whether alone in your bed, watching a scene from a movie, reading a line from a book or hearing a word from a friend, does that ache surface. Resulting in the burn in your throat, the anxiety grasping your heart and your body threatening to succumb to the dark.

Why do our bodies try to out run the sadness? Why do we think we even can? I have felt that desire in myself for years and most recently have tried to outrun it again even though I know I can’t.

Mostly it’s the fear. The fear of allowing such sadness in my life and feeling that it will swallow me whole. Keeping me in the dark with no hope of release. The fear is valid, since it’s happened to me before. It’s so visceral, so strong that I even think it’s more harmful than the sadness itself.

I’ve come to understand, little by little, that sadness is not meant to be latched onto me. It’s not meant to live a life of clawing at me as I try to outrun it. I am meant to take sadness by the hand and walk with it. Allowing myself to hear it, feel it, accept it.

I can only do that if I hold it by the hand and cherish my walk through life with it, no matter how tight the grip can sometimes be.

Sadness, come take a walk with me.