I Don't Do Sadness

I work as a waitress at a dive bar; literally, there is an old diving suit in the entryway. Our uniforms have the slogan “get your ship together” printed across the back, and about five months ago, I was sitting in my car before my shift sobbing. I walked in with puffy eyes and a big how-do-you-do smile. A few months later I was crying yet again in my car, driving home from the airport. I went in to work that afternoon with my ship together and swore I would never cry at work again. I broke that promise when I had to ask for a day off to go to a funeral. After that I gave up.

I feel like sometimes I treat sadness like a disease. It’s something to be contained and controlled. I definitely don't want to go out if I know I have it, should it to spread to anyone else. I have many remedies to make it go away, and I take precautions to keep it away.

It took a children’s movie to show me that I was wrong. Sadness in Pixar’s Inside Out was a very troubled little character. She was constantly outshined by Joy. As things were heading into turmoil, it was even more important that Sadness stayed contained.

When my boyfriend went across the country for a summer job, I tried to fill my days with as much Joy as I could. I surrounded myself with friends, tried to plan every second of every day with fun activities, made sure that I was plenty busy with work and school. I did have fun, I was busy, but at the end of the day I would come home and all I would want to do was tell him about it. I just wanted to sit with him. I would be on a hike or watching the sunset and would be thinking about how much he would enjoy being here right now. I would say a stupid joke and could see his eyes rolling. I would be craving Thai food, which I didn’t even like before he made me try it, and suddenly I would just be hungry for him. Joy could try her hardest, could use every trick in the book, and it wouldn’t make me miss him any less.

And this makes me sad. But what this new kid’s movie taught me was that Sadness was okay. Sadness is not a disease to be contained or protected against. Sometimes there are things that Joy cannot reach and overcome, and the only thing left is Sadness. Sometimes Sadness just needs to do her thing, and after an hour of crying, you actually somehow feel better.

It doesn’t mean that I am weak or broken. Even Jesus cried. When He had heard that one of His close friends Lazarus had died, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Some things are worth admitting that you are not strong enough, some things are worth breaking for. It means we are alive and human. Missing someone isn’t so bad, because it means you have someone worth missing.

In the end, it wasn’t Joy that brought her home. It was Sadness.

~Kat