A Case of Melancholy

A CASE OF MELANCHOLY

I always hate those days where you have this humming feeling of melancholy that seems to follow you around all day long. Often you know the cause of it, if you care to probe just that little bit further under the surface. Normally it's something rather trivial. Maybe it's an error of judgement. Or it's an uncomfortable truth you don't really want to admit. Either way, the bigger things naturally trigger a much more pronounced sadness or disappointment or disillusion. The emotion typically triggers a physiological reaction that betrays the way you're feeling inside. Melancholy, on the other hand, is more of a silent mover. No-one even has to know it's there. It tiptoes and pirouettes and leaps and dances around without scarcely leaving a trace. It's so light, so translucent, so 2D, that you often believe you're simply imagining it. Yet it has the most prominent presence all the same. 

For me it's this bizarre feeling of minor disillusion and discontent, and I say bizarre because being someone who loves life in all its different divisions and subcategories and perspectives, for me feeling that dissatisfaction with life doesn't seem right. It especially doesn't seem right when ironically everything is pretty wonderful and I can't think of anything to complain about. When I was younger, I used to experience melancholy but I didn't know what it was, nor did I know how to deal with it. I think I often misinterpreted it, and let it escalate into things far bigger, which I then wasn't very well equipped to deal with. I'd fool myself into exaggerating the feeling and the situation, till it became something bigger than me. 

The irony, is that in time I have come to realise that melancholy is merely one state of feeling. And by that, I mean that it is just that, a feeling, not a permanent state. It comes and it goes. It swirls into your veins and then it swirls right back out. Granted it normally derives from a trigger in your every day life, some more distant and less obvious than others, but it's still not a permanent, telling indicator. It's too unreliable. If you give it another hour or two, it'll be gone. The only reason it sticks around is if you dwell too much on it and pay it too much time and attention. When you're feeling abnormally happy and cheerful for no reason, you don't stop to question it. You just accept your current mood and that is that. Yet with melancholy, it seems to catch your foot and linger around, hovering over your shoulders, and you just can't quite seem to shake it. We feel this need to understand it. A need to pursue it further. We can never quite leave it alone.

For me, I've noticed over the years that there's a pattern in my melancholy, in the sense that it is normally linked to certain observations, thoughts, triggers that I believe are unfortunately enhanced through social media in particular. For me, my melancholy has a common denominator, and that is the comparing my lot with that of others. It's putting two and two together and coming to the conclusion that you fare worse than another. Creating a superficial, biased, critical criteria, in which you know you will come out worse every single time. It's that moment of temptation, where you're so happy and content and appreciative of everything you're fortunate to have in your life, yet you see what someone else has, and for that split second you have this incurable desire for more. To trade up. To risk it all. Put all your cards on the table. You feel this ambition, this provocation, this jealousy, because the mirror of someone else's life has seemingly highlighted the flaws and uncomfortable truths that lie in your own. Or on the other hand, it's making you see problems that don't actually even exist.

You lose all rationale and reason and logic, and you instead form unrealistic and unreliable and untrue conclusions that are so utterly trivial, yet they have the power to completely alter and change your mood. They aren't intense feelings, but they're just powerful enough to cast a shadow and spread a whisper of doubt. And sometimes that's all that's needed to tip you over into melancholy territory. The choice to stay there, however, is your decision, and yours alone. I personally find that for me, the perfect antidote is fighting through the lingering melancholy fog and reaching that terrain of rationale and logic and reasoning and judgement, aka wiring myself back up to the frontal lobes of my brain, where all those important tools are stored. You need to put everything back into perspective and regain control. Melancholy appears to me, to be a temporary disconnection of logic and rationale and judgement, from the internal processing system, which is where you try to make sense of everything going on in the world around you. And what I mean by that, is it is essentially a temporary loss of clarity. A temporary loss of reasoning. It's a bit like you have Bender and Brian from The Breakfast Club sitting on your shoulders, and normally both are providing their input with regards to what's going on in the world around you, all the new information entering your brain. But Bender, who tells it as it is, sets the record straight, has temporarily disappeared for a moment, so you're left with Brian, who's sweet and well-meaning, but has the tendency to over-analyse and exaggerate, and therefore draw the completely wrong conclusions.

I always find it peculiar though, because as much as I dislike melancholy, and I would never trade a day filled with feelings of happiness and joy, for a day of exactly the opposite of that, I have to admit that there's still something appealing about melancholy. Nobody likes the feeling of melancholy, but sometimes being allowed to wallow in self pity and lose yourself temporarily in all those woe is me type feelings, is actually kind of nice. A little bit poetic. A little bit dramatic. In that moment of disconnection, when you feel so alone and like your life is filled with problems beyond your control, and the future seems particularly uninviting, as does the present, sometimes having that disconnection is exactly what you need. You need that time to brood and wonder and sink down for a little while, because it helps you to understand a part of yourself that exists somewhere deep within your soul, that is often overlooked, forgotten about or neglected. It helps you understand yourself better. It can also help you identify problems, and provoke you to do something about it, make that change. And interestingly, your melancholy almost acts a gage to measure the strength of the things you surround yourself with. The people, the hobbies, the interests, the various aspects of your life, because whatever manages to pierce through and shatter the melancholy, and there's always something, is normally worth holding onto tight. It also makes you appreciate those things a whole lot more.

I don't believe that you should try to instigate a case of melancholy, though in this day and age it's frighteningly easy for us to do it without even realising. I also don't believe that you should try to extend the melancholy for any longer than you have to. Just simply let it be, then let it go, and if it returns more often than you would like, do something about it. Make a change, and see if in turn it makes a difference. If you find yourself submerged, allow yourself time to think straight and regain your bearings, then swim back up to the surface once more. First, do nothing. Then, do something. Listen to some music. Sing along to your favourite songs. Eat food. Bake cakes. Read a book. Go out for a walk. Make last minute plans. Reach out to the people you love and trust, even if it's just to have a random conversation. Have a hot shower. Go for a run. Watch your favourite film. If left to fester for too long, melancholy can turn into a suffocating web, or a seemingly permanent shadow lingering over your shoulder, following you wherever you go. And nobody needs that. Life's too short. It's a little bit like that Oscar Wilde quote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars". When circumstance or even sheer chance lead to a melancholy that brings you down into the gutter, turn around, change your perspective and see all the good things that surround you, all those things to be happy about in your life, all those things worth appreciating, no matter how big or how small. And sure you might not have it all, in reality no-one ever does, but instead of staying in the gutter, maintaining a distance between you and happiness, refraining from living the happy version of your life, use your melancholy as a platform from which to launch yourself as powerfully as possible, and catapult right back into those beautifully starry skies once more.