It’s just always there. The sadness you just can’t shake. That demanding belief that something is always going to go wrong no matter what you do to try and prevent the casualties. No matter what you try and do to stop the bleeding. No matter what you do to try and believe that things really will be okay.

The sadness you just can’t shake is waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the people you love to leave, and for all the masks you wear to finally slide off your face and reveal everything you’ve been hiding from the world. It’s a constant state of simultaneous terror and paralysis. It’s running away and staying still all at once. It’s like your fight or flight is broken just like the rest of you.

The sadness you just can’t shake is uninvited and unwanted but it really doesn’t give a shit how you feel. It’s staying whether you want it to or not. It’s your past, it’s your present, and it’s your future.

So you just learn to get used to it. 

You learn to push it down far enough for it not to overflow into your daily life. At least not too much. You learn to drown it out enough with liquor and shitty food and noise from crowded bars and empty conversations that you can’t be present in anyway because you’re trying so hard to shut that voice up in your mind that says you’re not good enough to be there.

The sadness you just can’t shake is an absence so present that you can’t help but stare into its abyss and wonder what’s next and what could possibly fill it. But no matter how hard you try, you never find an answer, not really.

Rinse and repeat, day in and day out.

It’s exhausting feeling nothing at all and everything all at once. It’s tiring to pretend things are okay when they are anything but.

But you try and keep going anyway, despite the sadness you just can’t shake. And that has to count for something. For anything.

At least I like to think so. At least, I need to believe so.