I have learned that there are two kinds of sadness, one that looks forward and one that looks backward. I have not figured out which one hurts more yet.
The one that looks backward is so much more focused on memories, nostalgia, and wistfulness, the belief that things could have looked different, that things could have felt different, things could. I could have been better, you could have been better, I could have been less intense, I could have been more aware, I could have stopped at the right time, I could have saved myself, things could.
I have started to think more deeply about the one that looks forward, the pain that is yet to come but is on its way. When I stop caring, when I finally shake this whole thing off, when I finally say “fuck, is this all you are?”. I am starting to worry about the pain that comes next. The last seconds before you give up on someone once and for all. I think that will hurt more, its anticipation hurts more.
The sadness that is looking forward has a way to it like a sorcerer, it finds itself existent in the dark parts of my mind without explaining itself, without showing its tricks. It comes as a warning sign, the loud bleating of goats before a storm. I have started to talk to the apparitions of the sadness to come, ask them why they are preparing me, why they are stopping me at strange points around the day making me delete conversations and move away from people.
The sadness that has gone is a story, I can read it, think about my place in it, and sometimes, on a rare night, cry again to feel. to remember feeling.
But the sadness to come is a prophecy, one that is bound to come true. Sometimes it is so close I can touch it, sometimes it has no temporality.
In India, we believe that all the knowledge of the human mind can be achieved if you sit under a banyan tree and just ask. When I was a child, I asked, who is going to cause the sadness to come? I think I heard “you are”
I am looking ahead, I can see some hairpin turns, some dropped baggage, some broken connections. The sadness to come is waiting at all those points, with a glass of water in hand, just to say, “this is a story now”.
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