Cures for Sadness I

Sad: /sad/

adjective

feeling or showing sorrow; unhappy

There's something quite fascinating I've discovered about the lives of majority of the people living in the 21st century. 

Somehow, we are all linked to the dreaded word "sad." It could be the makeshift sadness some of us like to advertise on social media to get a bit of attention, the empty sadness that has no reason behind it or the heart-wrenching sadness that emanates from real life f.with.me situations. I'm going to call it sadness, but some people go as far as calling it depression. 

Last week (depending on when this will get published) I had a day where I was just feeling sad for no reason. It came from deep inside, I literally woke up like that. I thought it was because of the test that was coming up, but I had studied for it, so there was no logical reason for me to be sad. I found myself searching deeper for the source and landed on a possible reason: a boy I think I was falling for, but he had long gotten over me and my unwillingness to open up to the idea of love, a story for another day. Nope, that wasn't it. So I settled to having absolutely no reason for feeling sad. 

My friends and I had to attend a clinic session that same day and we had a bit of time to kill after lectures, so we decided to roam around campus and get a some doughnuts. I was actually craving some ice cream and a lollipop. I was hoping that the sugar high could at least get my serotonin receptors to start working before I had to start medicinally stimulating them. But I settled for the doughnuts, surely sugar and carbs had to do the trick. 

After getting the doughnuts I decided to take a picture of them and I posted it on my status with the caption "cure for sadness."

60% delicious doughnuts

"And point me to a student that does not want to win R200 just for knowing stuff"

We then decided to sit on a bench and indulge in 60% delicious doughnuts. A few minutes later we were approached by a seemingly innocent guy who told us that we had the chance to win R200 if we could answer 3/5 general knowledge questions. The catch was that if we lost we would have to donate R20 to "charity." We dug deep into our pockets and managed to get R20 using all our change and started the challenge because we are "smart" right? And point me to a student that does not want to win R200 just for knowing stuff?

Fast forward to 20 minutes later and we lost, there goes our R20. Before the guy had began asking the questions, he had pointed us to a nearby stand and told us that the "charity" we would be donating to if we lost, would be under the stand if we needed to ask any further questions. My one friend was curious to find out more about this charity so we took a short two minute walk towards the stand and to our surprise, the charity did not exist. We basically got scammed.  All the effort the doughnuts had put in to make me feel better were washed down the drain. Three post-basic pharmacist assistants had just been scammed. HEKTIK.  With our heads deeply sinking into our hands with shame and mouths filled with laughter of disbelief, we headed to a nearby shop and attempted to get some lollipops to try once again to rescue us from our dumbness.  On our way there, we bumped into a friend of ours and explained to him what had just happened to us and like a fairy god mother, he pulled out money and bought us all ice cream. My heart was full again :)  

Cookies and cream ice cream to cure the sadness

Fast forward to the next day, my friends and I decided to buy ice cream that I had never tasted before. Correction; one of my friends was feeling generous and she bought us ice cream. I decided to take a quick snap and post it on my status with the caption: more cures for sadness.

My ice cream was melting, I was holding up my friends whilst taking this picture

I don't get much interaction with my statuses, but it seemed like people were getting a little bit concerned and wanted to know what was wrong. I had to turn down the worry by posting a follow up status that said: "I'm not sad, I am writing a series called cures for sadness. Please feel free to add your cures." I wasn't really planning on writing a series, I just wanted people to know that they should not worry.  Welp, three hours later, I had so many messages of people telling me what their cures were. At first I thought I would just read and congratulate them on the many brave ways they have on curing their sadness, but the more the answers came in, the more follow up questions I wanted to ask, to really understand what goes on in people's minds when sadness strikes.  I'm going to put the replies I received and questions I asked in Cures for sadness II and in Cures for sadness III I will give you a breakdown of what came to my mind as I read all the replies, enjoy xx.