On varying degrees of sadness
I’ve been sad before. Most of my adult life has been spent in snowstorm of worries and doubts - each flake a unique pattern of words with hooked barbs that catch on my brain matter and whisper failures to me. Living with depression means sometimes finding yourself bumping up against glass as your stumble through the blizzard and discover you’re actually trapped in a snow globe. You can see the people outside but they just can’t hear you. I’ve grown used to this – I know the patterns, I can see it coming and I’ve taught myself that it’s all temporary. Recurring, but temporary.
This isn’t about that kind of sadness, but that’s a helpful preface to it.
At the end of 2019, my friend Lucy died. Having already kicked breast cancer to the kerb once a few years before that, she was diagnosed again – this time triple negative, and this time it was everywhere. She found out in the summer, and by November she was gone.
Lucy and I met as Booksellers around 2010. Both fans of trope-heavy YA fiction and The Beautiful South, we fast became friends, and she became one of the first people to prompt me to go and talk to professionals about my mental health. On a cold December evening in the pub, she noticed the familiar mannerisms of someone uncomfortable in their own skin and she made me believe that I could get better. From that point onward, I knew I’d found someone who would remain one of my closest friends – and though she left bookselling, through pub trips and riverside rambles, we stayed close. When she was first diagnosed with cancer, I cried and she didn’t. She comforted me, which I think says more than my words could ever manage.
She fought off the cancer in such a beautifully practical way – always asking “okay, so what do we need to do next?” instead of wallowing. Always answering our questions and continuing to send us handwritten letters (I’m so glad I still have these) and ‘just because’ gifts. Forever thinking outwards.
Life went on. Lucy got the all-clear and we ate gigantic éclairs in celebration. She and her partner got engaged in Canada. I moved away from the North East to follow my writing aspirations down in London, but through visits and letters and inane whatsapp messages (each now as precious as diamonds) our friendship remained – though to my shame, perhaps I could’ve tried harder. I suppose I’ll never know now.
When I got the phone call two years later to say that the cancer was back, and that this time there wasn’t a winning outcome, it felt like my world had been pitched sideways. As I prepared myself over the next few weeks for what was a coming inevitability, I thought to myself that I could weather this. I have depression – sadness is part of my genetic make-up. We chatted and called each other relentlessly. She was always on my mind, no matter what else I was doing – a constant bubbling stream of consciousness that kept sloshing inside my skull. When things got worse, I dropped everything and barrelled back up North to see her in hospital. Leaving that ward and knowing I would probably never see her again was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. She died less than two weeks later. It was too soon. We thought we had a year. I thought I was ready for it all, but oh stars I was not.
So now, after all my waffle about my wonderful friend, we come to what I’m trying to actually discuss – which is how different grief is to any of the depression I’ve waded through in my life. Depression ebbs and flows in and out of my life, threatening to drown me at its peak but remaining a distant shimmer of blue when the tide’s out. When I’m depressed I find it nearly impossible to find joy – but when I’m out of a bout, I find emotions sharper and brighter. That’s all different now. Grief is all of the time, it turns out. The loss I feel is different to the crashing waves of mental illness. It’s not a thing that washes over me; it’s a space inside that’s now absent. It’s perpetual. I am sad all of the time.
And that’s okay. I’m this sad because she mattered, and now she’s not there anymore and it hurts. It’s not fair. I hate every second of it. I’ve found the change in sadness interesting. I can be happy and sad at the same time now. It isn’t insidious like depression – my grief is patient and quiet and even almost kind. It simply is. It doesn’t whisper hateful words, but it is always there and those moment s when my mind is unoccupied is when it sidles up to chat, almost apologetically. I worry if I say it aloud people will resent me for feeling sad even when I’m having fun with them – but it’s not like that anymore. It’s a background static and that’s okay. It’s a sad smile at a memory, not a raging hatred of my own self. That space that’s missing from me has been filled with her. I will carry her with me for the rest of my life and the sadness I feel will come along too. That sadness is the price we pay for love. And it’s worth every second of missing her for the time we had together.
I’m lucky enough to be kept aloft in life by people who believe so much in me. In what I can do and accomplish. I worry I let you down every day, but I hope you know that I am trying my hardest. I hope Lucy knew I was trying my hardest.
At the funeral, instead of flowers Lucy had a small stack of books on her coffin which meant something to her. One of them was my very first book – the Usborne Engineering Scribble book. It went with her, molecules and atoms mixing. My words and her soul exploring the cosmos together in one final act of support. I’ve never felt sorrow like that – never cried like that. When I moved to London she told me “I never understood bittersweet until now”, and finally I know what she meant.
Thank you Lucy. This isn’t goodbye, because you’ll never be gone until each of us who loved you are gone too. And then we’ll be with you again.
2087
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