In my sessions with the therapist, I held back, painting a less intense picture of how I truly felt. Even as the doctor diagnosed me with anxiety, mild depression, and chronic fatigue syndrome, I downplayed the depths of my struggle. Medication was the expected remedy, the pills designed to lift my mood and ease my racing thoughts.
Months later, I reflect on that conversation. I haven't spoken to him since November, yet I know I'll have to face those questions again soon, refilling my prescription.
I'm not eager for our next meeting. It's daunting to be honest about feelings that often feel nonsensical. Though I've had moments of happiness, most days I find myself caught in shades of sadness.
"Mild depression" hardly encapsulates the turmoil that consumed my thoughts and drained my spirit. My experience of sadness was far from mild—it was pain, it was suffering, it was drowning in self-loathing. I shifted from gray to pitch black, a darkness where hope seemed nonexistent.
Gray, for me, captures the essence of this emotion. It's more than just sadness; it's a mood that seeps into everything, eclipsing the beauty in the world.
Reflecting on "melancholia," I see it as an ache that arises from beauty tinged with pain—a wistfulness that holds you in a moment. It's a softer sadness, one that somehow comforts the soul.
But there's a stark difference between melancholy and sheer hopelessness. That leap from gray to black is profound; it's like losing all light, leaving nothing to see.
What I haven't confessed to the doctor is how I've slipped into that pitch-black space, drowning in the purest form of sadness, exhausted from hoping. It's a heaviness that blots out everything.
Yet, here I am, writing this after surviving those dark depths. I've managed to swim through and occasionally find myself in the realm where colors exist, or at least where shades of gray offer some solace.
These shades of sadness hold a peculiar goodness. Amidst the storm, they reveal the value of what we have. Despite the pain, our mere existence stands as a testament against the void. We're still here, and that in itself is worth acknowledging.
---
Once, a man uttered her name.
"Are you okay?"
Three words, ten letters, four syllables.
From a stranger, she heard it at last.
A simple question, yet it struck a chord.
She smiled and nodded.
Tears fell, not of sadness.
But of joy.
"Why are you crying? We can talk about it."
Her heart skipped a beat at the sight of him.
The man she'd dreamt of.
YOU ARE READING
The Gift of Merci
Short Story"Error means failure, and failure means disappointment." "The Gift of Merci" takes readers on a gripping journey through the life of Sage Luxaire, a relentless perfectionist who lives by the mantra that 'error equates to failure'. With a track recor...
