Do you know what sadness feels like? It’s when your body is already drowning in an ocean of your own tears but you have to keep swimming to catch your breath because there are people that depend on you. But those same people that depend on you are the ones that keep running the showerhead to make the water overflow in the tub and let your body submerge. Sadness is the reason that I barely sleep at night anymore and lay crying for hours listening to the beat of my own heart as my pulse vibrates through my veins. Sadness comes with severe feelings of loneliness when the people who love you wrap their arms around you and you still feel alone, sadness… is not loving anyone anymore. Sadness is getting the rid of people before they leave you, sadness is fighting with the devils and angels in your brain and they both lose because no, you’re not gonna do anything bad today, but no, you’re not gonna do anything good today because you’d rather stay inside and sleep for hours than go outside and feel the sun sweetly kiss your skin.

Sadness is when you have no desire to get better or happier. It’s when you’re depressed for no reason and everyone blames you for it. The names you’re called echo through your mind and bounce around off the sides of your skull until you finally say to yourself that maybe those words are true. You start to call yourself a freak. A loser. An attention-seeker… but you wouldn’t call me an attention-seeker if you realized how much pain people who are sad go through. Our DNA is encoded with tear drops left from the child hood remains of who we wished to be by now and the crushing of dreams as we continue to grow. Sadness is when there’s a banquet in front of you but you’ll settle for the small salad with a bit of dressing on the side because you’re just not hungry. Sadness is no motivation. No drive. Emptiness is sitting in a car on a deserted highway waiting for a tow-truck to come by so you can have someone to talk to.

Sadness is when you cut holes in your own skin to let your insides breathe and let out the demon screams because sometimes they get overwhelming, too. Sadness is keeping up your grades or letting them fail because everyone tells you that you’re not really sad… but you wouldn’t say I wasn’t sad if you saw how I struggle out of bed in the mornings to get dressed and I wake up with anxiety in my veins as if it were blood. Sadness is watching the people around you slowly slip away and you feel like screaming out but you just keep constantly saying, “I’m ok.” We longed to be held but when we are we slip through fingers like water. Sadness is when you think you deserve no one, when your only thoughts are made up of empty words trying to have meaning, but all the words merge together on the page because if you’re a word then everyone else is a novel… you’re just a small fragment to a bigger picture.

Sadness is the result of a chemical imbalance coated by the harshness of society and the expectations set upon us from a young age. Sadness is the reason why 3,000 people won’t wake up tomorrow, or didn’t wake up this morning. Sadness is the reason that we’re screaming but we never make a sound. Sadness is depression and depression takes lives. It can consume anyone… don’t let the smiles fool you. We put on a mask of happiness each morning to fool the world because we don’t want help… we just want it all gone. Sadness is the reason that he pulled the trigger and she burst open her skin. Sadness is when a tidal wave of anti-depressants can’t cure you. Sadness is a wide smile on a pretty face and scars on the inside of her thighs. Sadness is a hidden show that only comes out when we’re alone. Sadness is an empty sound... so listen in the silence for screaming.