You know, the kind of sadness that involves old time country music, a desire for rainy days, and a bottle of bourbon. The kind of sadness you can curl up with.
I always secretly loved that kind of sadness, and it often found me after a breakup when I wasn’t particularly interested in the other person. There was something pleasant about having license to keep to myself and not need to expend any emotional energy beyond, “Wow, I’m pretty bummed right now” and then drinking like my life was a Patsy Cline song.
To be clear, I wasn't seeking the kind of emotional emptiness that finds you during a depressive episode. It was the kind of sadness that could eventually be lifted by a sunny day or a long run or an A on a paper I had written.
The self-indulgent sadness was an emotional state that I pursued and reveled in when I could get it just right. And “just right” usually meant “going through a breakup with a person I don't actually call back” or “regretting that one-night-stand with the ex who just broke my heart.”
It was the kind of sadness that was addictive.
***
He and I fight infrequently. So infrequently, in fact, that when we were dating I wondered if our relationship wasn’t passionate enough (hey, we all have our own shit). And usually when we do fight it ends in us going to bed and waking up to have a rational conversation the next day.
This was not one of those fights.
It was the sort of fight that went on for days, and when we finally cut off one of its heads and thought we were all right, the next day would find me sobbing on the couch over something different.
There were a lot of tedious reasons it was so hard (ineffective communication, a desire to be the Right and Reasonable One in the relationship, new medications that were causing mood swings, blah blah blah). But it was hard. Harder than anything we’ve done together in the past two years.
The hardest part was I was unprepared for the intensity of my anger. There were days when I would be talking to my best friend and shaking with rage. Whether it was a function of new meds or wedding stress, or finally having feelings again after a year of depression I can’t say. And, truthfully, I didn’t examine what was going on too closely. All I knew was I was angry and one night found me angry enough that I started packing a bag to sleep on my best friend’s couch. As I stuffed pajamas into my bag and looked for my earrings for the next day, I heard the front door open and the fiancé talking to the cats. I deflated and asked myself:
“What the hell am I doing?”
He found me sitting on our bed, crying.
***
Some were my fault, others weren’t. Ultimately they didn’t work out because we would fight and I would give them the finger and go sit in my home wishing for rain and listening to Hank Williams. They ended because I didn’t care enough for them to continue.
And there was something comforting about those endings. The emotions were one-dimensional and soothing in their flatness.
Now, with the fiancé, it’s never just one emotion. It’s joy with aggravation, love with happiness, anger with sadness and frustration and fourteen other feelings I can’t identify. They are confusing and crazy-making and what had me packing my bag to sleep on the best friend’s couch. I’d lived so many years with flat, straightforward emotions that I was utterly unprepared for emotional complexity, especially the kind that combines love and anger and frustration.
Unprepared actually doesn’t even scratch the surface.
The night I was packing my bag, I was angry beyond any anger I’d ever experienced. Of course I was. I’d spent five days distilling sadness, distress, and frustration into something flat and easier to deal with. Rage is so much more comfortable than sadness. When I heard the fiancé’s voice at the door, I realized that I didn’t want to be flat anymore. When he came in and sat down next to me, I told him everything. He listened—he listened for a long time while I told him every emotion I was having and all of the ones I couldn't identify and how complicated everything was for me at the moment. We talked, and all of those stupid, complex emotions found a voice.
The funny thing is that even when I was sad and leaning waaaaaaay into it, it wasn't as satisfying as it used to be. No amount of Johnny Cash or Sam Houston whiskey brought back that feeling of pleasant self-indulgence or even the comfort that it used to bring. Rather than being a flat, understandable emotion, sadness was huge and complicated and made me feel so awful that it was hard to make it through the day without crying at my desk.
Instead, the rush of relief I was seeking came after talking and listening and apologies from both of us, when I went to bed with a glass of water, some music, and, well, him. He put his arms around me and kissed my hair and told me he loved me. One of the cats jumped into bed and headbutted me. Still a little sniffly, I closed my eyes and said out loud "Yes, this is home."
