When in a happy mood it is difficult to remember sadness, nomatter how prevalent it once was. Sadness is a tide: once it goes out, only remnants of its existence - reminders - remain. No iota of its pervase is still present.
Happiness does not overcome sadness, it displaces it. When you are sad, mindlessness and addledness are your goals. Not happiness, because you cannot truly remember happiness. But numbness is familiar, as it represents to the sad mind the absence of happiness. But numb does not compare, nor should it. An oft misconception I have made is that I am in a good mood or in a bad mood. There are several shades of grey of course, but the cutoff between the two is exclusive, an insurmountable divide.
But this is not the case. A perpetual numbness, endured over long weeks, can manifest as either comfortable glumness, or contented monotone. It is neither. It is an absence of feeling. It is far more dangerous than sadness for it will not be recognized by the host. It is the truly disingenuous space. The victim may even acquiesce completely, and in the absence of true emotion, find himself believing that this grey experience is ultimate & is what life lived is like. Vague memories of visceral emotion are chalked up to the exaggeration of a youthful mind. This is not the case.
Noone can say, or know, what causes the grey. It is incredibly hard to detect by a third party, & almost impossible for the host to identify. This is the primary reason it should be feared.
My own awareness of the grey was incredibly fortuitous. Having spent countless months suffering obliviously, I suddenly awoke. For what reason I cannot be sure - perhaps because of sheer happenstance?
I awoke to happiness, unbridled, absent of reason or particular. The grey, having dissolved, did not cross my mind. My brain, long thirsty for emotion, lapped up the new and obliterated all memory of the cloud that preceded.
The particulars I recalled, but the mood, or lack thereof, was forgotten. And forgotten it would have stayed, had I not been writing.
For in writing can true mood be educed. Reading over my recent works, even with my newly found mentality, I encountered a strange disconnect. True emotion was absent, a gear I could not reach, a tool I could not perceive. All my work, all those long nights, it all read grey. Vapid. Boring.
I was shocked, truly. How could I have possibly been so dull?
To clarify, the writing was superficially satisfactory. The prose, admittedly hackneyed (as is true of all my work), was nonetheless structurally sound. Nothing jarred, I did not cringe, I was not ashamed.
But reading a work is a journey, & upon travelling for some distance with any piece, a voice appears beneath the writing. A voice of clarity by an expert author. But even poor prose, if honestly executed, will display a voice. Frail, perhaps; uncertain absolutely. But a voice of the emotions of the writer.
I know my voice and when I read my work I hear the voice clearly. The message may be convoluted, and my authorship whilst happy can be grating. But it is my voice and even in the pits of my depression it would shine through - although not with a particularly elevating timbre.
I love my voice and it is why I continue to write, even when I hate everything I write. I have spoken of it before and it is a signature, embedded in the page, a life force.
And a great author will have a great, booming, prevalent, clear voice. Orwell for me is the greatest of all, not for his words (which can be hit and miss), but for his fantastic voice. You read Orwell and you see his soul, bare, human. Fallible like the rest of us. Insecure despite his brilliance. It is why I write.
So the absence of my voice in my recent works begat a rude realization. No longer could I read and be sucked in, empathetic despite myself, my previous musings. Instead I was left looking at words on a page, searching for their meaning. I hope my voice will return, and I think it will. Only time will tell.
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