Cures for Sadness III

So why did I decide to explore this topic? Well, I have been experiencing sadness for my whole life and before social media became big, I always thought the frequency of my days of unexplainable sadness was excessive. I also questioned the authenticity of my sadness. Was it real or did I just want my parents to pay a little more attention to me? When I was younger I really enjoyed eating everything sweet and chocolatey, it really knocked the sadness out of me with a sugar high so massive, it would send me into endless hours of satisfying sleep. I would always have an emptied out packet of sour jelly beans in my blazer pocket and I would pop one or two in my mouth when the teacher wasn't looking (PS: I find it really ridiculous that we could not at least eat snacks when we wanted to at school, but that's a story for another day)

At the tender age of 12 I got my very first Mxit, Twitter and Facebook accounts. That's when I started to learn that other people also feel sad, some more than others. At that time I was convinced all the "sad" statuses were real, until I sat with a friend of mine at school and she posted that she was sad on her status with a huge smile on her face. At first I was too afraid to ask her what was wrong, but a few minutes later I finally built the courage to ask her what she was sad about and she said: "oh I'm not really sad I just want boys respond to this. They are more likely to reply to your messages and ask to meet up if they see this." Attention seeking behavior, that's what it's called. A few minutes later, five boys had popped up on her Mxit chat. It works.

I just have four questions I'm going to try to answer here:

Where does sadness come from? 

"Please, your 'a while' should be defined by you only."

There are two different types of sadness that can attack us; situational sadness and voidy sadness (please do not Google the word voidy, I doubt it exists).

Situational sadness has a time limit, especially if it's caused by something that's out of our control.  It demands to be felt for a while, then eventually we decide to carry it on for longer than it needs to be felt. Please note: "a while" could mean any time frame, you failed a test? maybe "a while" to you is 3 days and to someone else it's a week. I don't think prescribing time to be sad is ever a good thing. It just makes everything harder than it needs to be, especially for people who are desperately seeking to measure up to societal standards. Please, your "a while" should be defined by you only.

Then we have voidy sadness. I just hate this one because it really demands to be felt for as long as it wants to. You can go to sleep feeling fairly okay and then in the morning, the depths of the depths of the depths of your soul Just. Say. No. Try to eat your favorite breakfast? Wear a cute outfit? Be prepared for the tutorial? Early for class? Beat your face to perfection? Nothing helps. Which brings me to my next question:

What is our response to sadness? 

"The material you choose to read will determine which of the two options you end up coming back to your reality with."

Foooooood. Subscribe and argue with me if you don't agree. Cheese, chocolate, sweets, pizza, cream, pasta, biscuits, pies and ice cream. You name it. I read somewhere that the high fat content in ice cream really does a good job in melting away that seemingly unending vortex of sadness that is created deep in our beings. 

I also got a lot of responses of prayer and YouTube videos. Personally and shamefully I must admit that I don't pray first, I know I should and I feel guilty when it is the fifth thing I think of doing, but I find when I get to it, it actually helps. YouTube videos are more realistic, because this sadness does not announce itself loudly, so in your confused state of mind, you watch something you like, to distract your mind. 

 "The vicious cycles of mistrust that society has created have shut our mouths permanently."

Reading offers an escape into a reality that is not yours to fix. Unfortunately, depending on what you're reading and what you're looking for in your readings, you might just leave your book only to be hit by 100% sadness with no solution; or 100% sadness with 1000% solutions or at least some motivation. The material you choose to read will determine which of the two options you end up coming back to your reality with.

Talking is quite hard to implement as a first resort. The vicious cycles of mistrust that society has created have shut our mouths permanently. But like one of the responses said; "as cliché as it sounds, venting actually helps." Although we use each other more as sound boards than advice generators, I couldn't agree more. Talking actually helps. 

Do our responses aim to cure the sadness or merely mask it?  Most of them really just mask the sadness. Especially that first response of food. After your taste buds have been thoroughly tickled and your stomach acid begins to do its thing, you are 100% guaranteed that the sadness will definitely come back in its 70% full force. Same goes for YouTube. 

I'm not sure if we can even cure voidy sadness though. I'd like to compare it to a mouth ulcer; it comes spontaneously, we try not to eat anything that will irritate it and when it decides, it heals spontaneously. We are not the ones who must do the work, we must just put our faith in the regenerating capacity of our epithelial cells and try to support them as best as we can. 

The answer to my final question and my closing thoughts will be from one of the responses I received. I could not contain my excitement, paraphrase or add on to anything this respondent said:

Do you think it's necessary for us to be sad? 

Sadness leads to humility and also lets us appreciate happiness if or when it arrives.

Sadness also leads to more thinking and reflection, whether it's about life or your choices or the people around you. It increases your sense of awareness but more than that it is in those moments of unexplainable sadness that we feel the universe/a higher power is listening to us, that our sadness and melancholy is a message to do something. During these periods some people even think their sadness makes them special or mysterious, they use it to write, or make music and art.

For what it's worth, it often leads to creativity but also makes us kinder because I think during that time period we are also more aware of how we can harm or help the people around us (Lerato Nthathakane, 2020)

Until next time xx

Cures for sadness, an image sent to me by a close friend of mine :)

I walked into class and had this cute gem handed to me by a lovely person. Behind: Constipation notes, the only evidence I have of them ever existing (I lost them lol)