Nobody likes a Sad Girl

I've been many things over the course of my 29 years of life. I've been shy, I've been reserved, I've been loud, popular, disliked, happy and sad- to name only a few. And of all the moods I've exhibited, sad has been the loneliest and the hardest.

The truth is nobody likes a sad girl. Why would they? What on earth does Sad Sally have to offer except for long and overly depressing catchups over coffee and deep meaningful insights at happy hour. Nobody has time for that. At the age of 26, most of my peers were at the most defining stages of their careers, happy in-love and celebrating baby or property number 1! The general narrative was one of big moves and grand celebrations for grand accomplishments, #blessed and Nicki Minaj captions for your champagne glass snap.

My reality was the polar opposite of the millennial mood board, I had resigned from a job that had caused me a lot of trauma and sent me into mild depression, moved from Cape Town back to Pine Town (which at the time was the worst thing in the world) and dealing with a family member struggling with substance abuse. My world was certainly not bubbles and loud smiles- on the contrary, my days were mostly engrossed with crippling fear for my little brother's life, deep sleep and rewatching EAT,PRAY,LOVE. I lived for movies that made me cry, it was a great excuse to have a good cry and blame it on anything other than the fact that I was deeply unhappy and deeply concerned about my life or lack thereof.

The sad part about being sad is nobody cares. Being sad is acceptable in small doses and for limited periods of time. No one has time or energy for you when you cannot be who they want you to be or need you to be for them. People get tired of hearing about your problems and your sadness, its cute for a few months MAYBE but if every time someone sees you, all you have to share is sad, they'll eventually stop seeing you. This is the very hard pill I had to swallow as invitations to hang out dwindled and catchup phone calls seized and friendship after friendship quietened.

It would probably be easier to say humans are trash (which don't get me wrong, they are) but I fully recognise how people want to protect their small pockets of happiness and instinctively will resist anything and anyone who could detract from it.

So what does a sad girl do when all the (happy) people flee from her possibly contagious and contaminating sadness? Gather up all the remaining bits of her will power and force a smile? Put on some Ariana Grande and sing some confidence back into her marrow? Or simply wait it out and hope this mood storm will subside soon. My journey to finding some happiness and peace and self has been a combination of all three, with way more Hillsong Worship than Ariana Grande though. I have taken a concerted effort to acknowledge my hurts, my faults and mistakes for what they really are and have worked hard to escape toxic spaces and people while filtering in the positive and the healthy.

With this blog, I hope to share the different lessons I have learnt, pains I have felt, losses I have endured and victories I attained over the past 3 years of putting back the pieces to a very broken girl. And even if my story only resonates with one other, it would have been all worth it.