July 11, 2023

I feel sad. Again. 

It has been over half a year since things fell apart between me and James. I keep feeling that I am doing better, and I momentarily feel glad that I seem to have moved on. 

But the process of moving on is a long and gradual one. That pendulum keeps swinging back into the sadness. If you are reading this blog, you probably know what I am talking about. 

The sadness keeps almost surprising me, even though it has visited me so many times that I should be expecting it to stop by again. 

I keep asking myself why I am not fully better. 

I think that, when we feel the sadness and fear its unplanned presence, it is easy to focus on how far we have left to go. When we do this, we lose sight of how far we have come. I think it’s important to focus on the pride I feel in myself for all I have done to heal. I also am trying not to lose sight, even though I am very tired of the sadness, of what I can gain in this moment. I am trying to hold onto the insight about life and myself, and opportunities for growth and emotional strength development, that I can gain from the sadness and from these moments of feeling “down.” If I have to go through sad or tough things in life, I might as well gain something along the way, and fight to fully process my emotions in a way that someday I will be healed and stronger, instead of those unprocessed emotions still subtly haunting my mind like invisible ghosts. I am trying to maintain my faith in the process – even though it sometimes feels difficult to trust the process in the middle of these moments where I do not feel “better”, even after all this time. 

Someone said (it might have been Brené Brown?) that the goal in life should not be to be happy. Rather, our goal in life should be to allow ourselves to feel the full range of human emotions. 

A friend of mine once told me that, when she moved to a city in a different state and felt homesickness and longing for her family, she told herself that it was okay to feel sad and happy at the same time – sad over the things she had lost, but happy and content about what she had gained through venturing off on her own as a single woman. 

The sadness is part of the journey. Even after all this time.