I'm Okay With Sad

I’m Okay With Sad- John Derryberry

My wife skipped a sad song as we drove to Des Moines to see You Can See Everything (Side note: go watch that movie), and I said I was okay with sad songs, so she flipped it back. We both enjoyed the song, and it was a small moment in a wonderful overnight trip to Des Moines, hanging out in its East Village. Yet I kept coming back to my comment about being ok with sad. It was such an instantaneous response to a normal moment that it caught me off guard.  After reflection, I felt it came from finding myself in a healthy emotional place. Still, after all these years of my own emotional recovery and helping so many more with their own healing, I see so many of us avoid sadness. When, in fact, we're just always delaying it.

With time and space from the tragedies I experienced in my youth, I came to a healthy realization at a young age: everything ends, and it usually ends with sadness.  Not experiencing a relationship as it unfolds is one of the greatest disservices we do to ourselves, and it robs us of the only human experience we have. Yes, sadness, doubt, jealousy, and countless other emotions are extremely uncomfortable. I still remember how I didn’t feel like my skin fit correctly on me when I was in the depths of self-loathing and depressive moments.  I went to great lengths to avoid sadness; it felt like a stab in my heart every time I would allow myself to feel it.

Now, sadness is another emotion that tells me how to approach a situation. Sadness reminds us that something beautiful ended, something we missed out on, something we hoped for never came to fruition, or something we don't want to end will, in fact, end. We could dissect countless other somethings, but the reality is that sadness tethers us to the notion that life isn't always about the heights joy brings; it is also about the depths sadness brings.  We need both, and many other emotions, to form the connections with others that let us discover a full life.

It was a quick line in a beautiful weekend filled with the love my wife and I share. At some point, when one of us is gone, it will be a weekend we look back upon with sadness, not because it brings pain, but because it will be a memory we can not recreate again. We won’t be able to rehash it, nor will we be able to look back on it together. That is a sadness I want to linger in, a sadness that reminds me I was loved deeply and, in return, loved my wife deeply. I was alive, living life, knowing one day one of us will have a great deal of sadness to work through. I hope that is a very long time from now, and there are countless more sad songs between us. I’m okay with sadness; it is one of the best ways to know joy, happiness, and love. We have to be brave enough to feel it fully.