Why do we feel so alone in our sadness?

Sharing our unsavory emotions to feel connected to something bigger.

Okay, so just to make things clear, I am a naturally sad person. Dispositionally, I seem to have come out that way — labeled before I could speak as sensitive. Apparently, babies with cholic are labeled this and you can find correlations to later dispositional traits. I am also a jealous person. I have tried to tease that out of my personality for as long as I can remember, and yet, it always comes up.

I want what others have. I both love and hate them for it. I try to stuff it. A clear example of this is that I spent most of my life being jealous of my sister. She came out dispositionally chipper. And beautiful. She did not have a cholic. An almost superhuman example of our Western cultural values encapsulated into one being. My envy started early. She arrived and received presents. I remember my five-year-old self longing to be her, getting the attention of everyone. I stole her gifts. I thought she wouldn’t know because she was a newborn. As an adult, this logic holds up. Did she really miss them? And yet, my actions were met with my mother telling me (I can hear her words in my head), “Carissa, that belongs to Casey. That little bear is Casey’s gift. You can’t have it.”

That was a defining moment. From then on, I compared myself to her. I policed my being against hers. I know there is someone in your life like this.