I think it’s always a little dangerous, for someone like me, melancholy me, to listen to sad songs of love forlorn on a lonely Monday night.
Melancholy sinks deeper still in the yawning gasp of my soul and I look to the heavens. My brow furrowed, my lips a topsy-turvy smile.
I wonder why I’ve turned out like this. Brooding. Moody. Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That has got to be one of the greatest album titles ever. Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah, they rock.
Sometimes, I catch myself and I think I might be doing it on purpose. Like maybe it’s cool to be wrestling in the depths of emotion and pain. It’s not really cool. You just think a lot. And feel a lot. There’s nothing really cool about it.
Maybe it’s suspended adolescence. You think that you’ll grow out of it by the time you start working, start a family and all, but you don’t really. At least, it doesn’t seem so at this point of time.
I think you assume a different guise. Oh, I’m twenty-five now. Time to seem a little more serious, a little less playful. Time to be concerned about my career, about CPF, about setting down a deposit for the latest HDB development at Pulau Senang, about nothing really much at all.
And then you have the quiet moments. No matter how you try to stuff activities and a million and one other things into your time, you just can’t escape from pockets of pure silence.
And then your self catches up with you.
You sit on the floor or on the bed and there’s no one but you and a lifetime, well, at least a week’s worth of thoughts, of true emotion flood in and you can’t take it. You just can’t. Then you sob. Hot, fat tears rolling down flushed cheeks.
It’s never actually happened to me before. Usually I seek out the quiet. Then I wait for it to fill and envelop me. Then the lingering sadness returns. It was always there. It lingers, remember? But, then, I sense it better. The funny thing is I’m not sad at any particular thing. I’m just sad. Life’s pretty sad, if you think about it. Sin tinged. More than a tinge actually. Far more than that.
And I think then my Father shows me why I’m really sad. Do I feel more? But I think I’m as numb as they come. But this world. This earth, all the people…we’re just too marked by the tragic. Not too surprising, I guess. It’s been like this since the rebellion and the fall. The quiet fills and envelopes. Yes, it does.
And I lift my eyes to You.
