What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

on sadness as a brief event

The thing no one tells you about recovering from depression is that you have to relearn sadness. Recovery doesn’t mean you’ll never be sad again; it just means that getting upset is no longer the emotional equivalent of dumping gasoline on a constantly-burning fire. Sadness becomes, not a baseline, but a discreet event, like an object you can pick up, hold for a while, and then put down again. Even so, the first time it happens, there’s still this moment of panic where you think, shit, what if I’m not actually getting better? What if this is what sets it off again?

Which is totally understandable. Depression tends to condition you, Pavlovian style, to constantly expect the trapdoor of Things Are Unremittingly Awful to open under your feet the second you have a setback or a mildly bad day, and that’s a hard reflex to shake. You flinch like your brain is going to slap you in the face - and then sit there, confused and a little astonished, when it doesn’t. You’re sad, yes, but just about that one thing, or about a manageable cluster of related things, and while you might lie in bed or mope for a bit, the feeling passes, and you can get up again. 

Recovering from depression doesn’t just mean learning how to be happy. It means learning how to be sad in a healthy way.

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    …Wow. This. Wow. Thank you for articulating this – I needed words for it and didn’t even know it.
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