Inexplicable Sadness

When life is a dark, sad place to be, something’s very wrong

“I

was in first grade when I first felt like I didn’t want to live. It wasn’t even a new feeling exactly. It was more like an intensification of a feeling I’d always had. I was very, very sad and I didn’t want to be alive anymore. But I didn’t say anything to anyone about it.”

Even small children can become enveloped in a cloud of gloom. Sometimes, their sadness has a reason. They may be living in a hurtful environment or they may have experienced loss. When children aren’t guided to speak about their emotions, the feelings of pain tend to build in the psyche and in the body, creating an inexplicable heaviness, a darkness of the soul.

Sometimes, this same feeling occurs for no reason. Nothing bad is happening in the youngster’s life beyond the normal frustrations of childhood. Parents frown occasionally. The answer is “no,” quite often. There are disappointments in everybody’s life, at every age and stage. Deep depression is not the normal response to these sorts of experiences and yet, some children feel it. They have inexplicable sadness.

“This feeling accompanied me throughout grade school and high school. I just thought that everyone feels this way. I didn’t know anything different. Sometimes I tried to talk about it to my mother but I could never really explain it properly.
When I was a teenager, I’d say something like, ‘I hate school and I have no friends.’ Mom wouldn’t get it. She’d say, ‘What do you mean? You are such a great student and your friends call you all the time!’ ”