Sometimes I can’t shake this sadness in spite of all my training.
I can’t seem to wish myself into happiness,
whitewash it with a positive affirmation
or two or twenty.
I cannot murder the thoughts that shatter me,
throw a pretty sofa cover on a raggedy and misshapen couch.
So,
my sadness and I sit uncomfortably together
on worn-out springs.
Rage builds behind my teeth when others want to name this grief depression,
as if it is a medical condition like a stubbed toe,
or an open wound
easily sutured with needle and thread.
Pop a pill or two and surely that will cure loneliness, because
my sadness is nothing more than a chemical imbalance, after all.
Well-meaning loved ones ask me,
“why are you sad?”
not recognizing the question requires justification.
No one has ever asked me to qualify my happiness.
And,
when did we become so intolerant of grief anyway?
Grief is contagion.
It is the house on the street
everyone crosses to avoid,
where the compassion gets tossed over the fence
but never carried to the door.
So, my grief and I,
we keep our own counsel.
Shut the door, dim the lights,
and hold ourselves gently through the long night.
© Sabrina Santa Clara, 2013
The story behind the poem
I wrote this in 2013, and I keep it here because I still mean it. I’ve spent decades in training — as a student, as a practitioner, as someone with a whole shelf of tools — and none of it has made me a person who doesn’t get sad. I don’t think it was ever supposed to.
A word about the pill line, because I don’t want to be misread: I am not against medication. I’ve watched it save lives, and if it’s holding yours together, keep taking it — this poem is not an argument with your prescription. What I’m angry at is narrower and older than that. It’s the reflex to reach for a diagnosis the moment sorrow shows up, so the sorrow becomes a malfunction instead of a response. Sometimes sadness isn’t a symptom. Sometimes it’s the accurate reaction of a person who loved something and lost it, and calling it a chemical imbalance is one way of not having to sit beside it.