Sad People

Sunshine looks pretty on spiderwebs, and sorrow looks pretty on sad people.

Sad people spend their whole life painting sunlight on their webs to fool the others into keeping them. But painting a ray of sun in the sky is not the same as the actual sun.

I want my sorrow to look nice, dressed in lovely words that feel like honey. Because sorrow, to me, is a beautiful expression of an ache that sings through the soul that can’t be ignored. It’s mainly loneliness that lives here.

And sometimes fear. I am afraid for the simple reasons.

I’m afraid for my children. Not because they are growing up in a polarised social world, but because they, like me, feel the world and I can’t make life feel as beautiful as patent leather did to me in my own childhood.

I often try to joke away my sadness, in conversation. Ashamed of what it might say about me if other people think of me as a ‘sad person’. But the older I get, the more I lean into my truth. Authenticity is everything.

More people need to paint sorrow into their spiderwebs.

The world would look so beautiful strewn with sorrow and sunshine.