“I am not depressed right now.”

I let the observation land in my body. Breathe it in. Watch it fall down onto the top of my pillowy stomach like a kid collapsing into the soft, air-puffed fabric of a bouncy house floor.

I am not depressed right now.

Noticing. Repeating. Sipping up the smells of honeysuckle, admiring the way it clings to the wet, lichen-covered boulders on the side of the mountain trail.

The Big Sad must be around here somewhere, but they’re not tugging on me today.

Can I remember a time in my life when I wasn’t walking with The Big Sad close by?

No, it’s always been there. Lurking behind a tree while I examine budding tulips. Hovering near my shoulders while I sit alone on the edge of the playground.

It’s like a piece of oversized luggage when you’re traveling. You may be able to set it down for a moment but you cannot leave it unattended. You can unpack it. But eventually you’re going to have to stuff it back up, even heavier than it was before, and keep dragging it along. Even when it’s empty, it takes up so much space.

It’s knowing the world is unfair. It’s knowing people do terrible things to one another. It’s terror and sadness but also anger, because we could build anything and we choose to build strip malls and drive-thru restaurants?

It’s a sense of disappointment and hopelessness that’s so big, it makes it hard to smile for the camera.

It’s the feeling of separation and otherness that washes over you when you realize other people don’t feel this way at all. Jealousy. But, also protectiveness, because something about The Big Sad is more honest and true. Having it there with you, right where you can see it, feels safe as much as it aches.

Some days I wake up and The Big Sad is laid out on top of my whole body. Heavier than a weighted blanket. More like a 150-pound dog that doesn’t realize it’s too big to sit in your lap.

Some days it’s less like The Big Sad is with me or on top of me, and more like I’m stuck inside of it. Spinning on a loop, like one of those rotating rides at the state fair where you stick to the walls and the floor drops out.

My mother insists it’s just hormones. Maybe. If my hormones have been out of whack since the third grade, that tracks.

I think it’s a natural response to the design of life. It’s like a smoke alarm has started going off in the kitchen; you want to investigate the source of the smoke while everybody else is just ripping the alarm off the wall so it stops making noise.

✤

This weekend I drove into Atlanta to join some friends for a dinner party. As I was plating a melon salad with lime and sticky granola, I told folks I’d been out at a concert the night before. Japanese Breakfast at the Tabernacle.

“Did you cry?”

Wow! No, actually! Which is odd because I’m very tender and prone to spontaneous tears over minor things. How did I make it through an entire set of For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) and NOT end up crying?

No, I did not cry. Instead of crying, I had two tall boys of PBR, sat with my elbows on the ledge of the balcony, and watched rectangles of confetti flitter like moths under the lights. I belted all the lyrics I could remember from Paprika while a tiny angel in a sailor hat hit a gong wrapped in a wreath of flowers and LED lights.

No, I did not cry at the concert. But I did cry last night. Hot tears running down my cheeks for two hours while we finished the finale episodes of Dying for Sex. The oversized Render ATL t-shirt I was wearing as pajamas, covered in snot from shoulder to shoulder.

Wearing shirts covered with snot is a new thing for me. A few weeks ago I babysat my sweet baby niece and she cried for about three hours straight. I walked all over the house, dancing, singing, bouncing her up and down in front of the mirrors, but she knew I wasn’t her Mother. We survived together, one big clammy mess.

✤

Being alive hurts. If you were to make a pros & cons list for being alive, I’m not sure the list of pros would ever have enough line items to outweigh the bad. Not even if you count every rainbow or every flower or every speck of glitter where moonlight hits the surface of the water.

Is something better than nothing? Is creation better than oblivion?

It doesn’t matter. Today we are all here.

So, we say thank you.

Thank you to the parts of ourselves that hurt for other people.

Thank you to the strength that increases to meet the weight of our grief.

And we look for opportunities to shoot spiky, feathered darts of goodness into every day.

Happiness like shrapnel, little pieces of light to get stuck under our skin.