I usually try to suppress it, because there is this thought that I can very well decide for myself how I feel. But now I want to hold on to this thought for a moment. Why is this melancholy there? Depression is what it is; I cannot fight it like this. So I take a step back. Nothing changes at first, but I feel the pain, the pain of the soul, so to speak. Pain has a cause, an injury. It is a warning signal and it needs time to heal. What makes it difficult, though, is the distance in time from the event that caused it — or rather, which event exactly, and when. So all I have is the pain, the warning signal, and the time needed for healing. Pain has a function; it wants to draw attention to something. With a broken knee, characterising the event is relatively simple. But this is about the psyche, so we are dealing with a great deal of time, possibly several subsequent injuries, while the original wound may never have healed and was repeatedly expected to bear weight.
And that is probably the real difference from the knee. With the knee, at least you know when it happened. With the psyche, you cannot even be sure of that. Perhaps it was one event, perhaps several, perhaps just one that was never allowed to heal properly because weight kept being put on it before it was ready. I do not know exactly, and that is part of the problem.
And it can be part of the solution.
So really, all that remains is to take the pain for what it is, without being able to name its cause. I find that difficult. I think that is also why I usually suppress it — not because I truly believe I could simply decide not to be sad, but because pain without an address is harder to bear than pain whose origin I can at least name. But perhaps something already begins to shift precisely there, when I stop seeing not knowing merely as a deficiency.
Perhaps I do not have to demand of myself that I immediately find an address for it. Perhaps, for now, it is enough that something remains open, and that it needs time. Not the date of the injury, but simply the space to be allowed to heal at all, instead of being overloaded again and again before it has had the chance.
Written on 17 August 2026 at 15:25. © 2026 Whisper7. All rights reserved.