For the most part, I have two main emotions: happiness and anger.  They are two emotions that come off as extreme opposites but I see them more like friends that are not speaking to each other.  One very directly correlates with the other in that any threat to things that makes me happy will cause immediate and insurmountable anger in the same way that my anger can be assuaged by a reminder of something that makes me happy.  I try my damnedest to stay on the happy side but my permanent frown lines would beg to differ.

I try to avoid feeling sad because feeling that way sucks. I’m human and it’s unavoidable.  For the most part, my moments of sadness can be quick and fleeting.  A scene from a movie will cause a flood of tears, a song I’ve heard a million times suddenly strikes a blue chord in me, or a beautifully written passage in a book draws on a memory I had long forgotten.  There are other moments that are more lingering like receiving news that a neighbor I truly loved has died or hearing that a friend is suffering and I can’t do a single thing about it. 

I once got into some very serious trouble in high school.  It sounds dumb to relay this story now but I accidentally lit a matchstick on the school bus.  You gotta know that as a skinny, straight A student, I wanted to die when the bus driver pulled over to the side of the road and yelled at me in front of everyone.  I wasn’t quite suicidal but I could not imagine that there was any worse feeling than what I was going through. Alone.  I sat in my room and cried from fear and shame.  One foot in front of the other and one day at a time, I climbed the steps of the bus and sat in the front row I had been relegated to as punishment.  The funk covered me like a black shrould and I can remember smiling thickly, trying to act like I wasn’t humiliated beyond any realm of comprehension for an awkward, insecure teenager.

Weeks later, I was going about my business when I realized that I wasn’t feeling the constant despair anymore.  It had lifted and I hadn’t even noticed when it had.  I stopped what I was doing so I could remember that feeling.  I wanted to make sure that I understood that, no matter how bad it had been for me, it passed.  It was a good lesson for me as a teenager and I’ve certainly carried it for four more decades and will until the day I die.  

Luckily, I have never again experienced that same level of sadness. Certainly, I have been sad.  Hell, I’m sad today but what I look forward to is the next minute, hour, or day when I will no longer be sad because it always passes.