About Your Funeral

     I have the loveliest friends, a supportive family, a beautiful home, a job, an innate intelligence, and so many other things to be grateful for. I am alive and healthy, creative and inspired, ambitious and thirsty for knowledge. I am young and anticipatory for my future. I am going to college to pursue a higher education, to better my mind and myself. I have a soul that is gushing with love, a mind that is brimming with ideas. I have my voice and a respected reputation. I am a prolific artist with an affinity for lovely things. I have all of this, but I'm still sad.
     I am destined to always be melancholy; it seems to be ingrained into the very fibers of my being. At the end of each day, after embarking on countless adventures consisting of photo shoots, shenanigans with friends, and laughter that makes your abdomen ache, I feel my sadness well up inside of me until it's unbearable. And I can't stop it; I can't stop it from consuming me. And I don't know how to cure myself of it; nothing I do will make it go away. My "happy" moments can alleviate and even make me forget about it, but it's always there, waiting to pounce once I am utterly alone. My sorrow thrives when I have only myself as a companion. I can no longer be by myself for long periods of time; I become stagnant, paralyzed by my unexplainable emotions. 
     I have accepted that I can never rid myself of this wretched sadness. It will forever fester within the abysmal depths of my heart and mind. And at first, it bothered me that I may never be completely happy but now, it doesn't really faze me at all. For my melancholy is a defining element of my person and I know that without it, I wouldn't have the perspective I do on the world and everything within it.  

Photos by the beautiful Kalaija Mallery. Click on the picture to be directed back to it's original source.