The saddest thing is to love someone that you don’t like very much.

Or maybe it is to love someone knowing they are using you, even abusing you, but you still try. Every time, they betray or abandon you, you still trying to please them, to help them.. Make things bettor for them. You forgive them.
Because you cannot help that leap of joy that you feel every time you see their faces that overpowers any logic, self respect, or resolve you might have. Pushing aside memories and even fresh pain or anger, or bruises, that damn joy bubbles right on out there front and center, eating away at the reality of it. Of course only to get popped by the next dose of reality.

And then of course there is the sadness of mistaking sexual desire for love.

We could call that the roller coaster of sadness I guess, the Low points, outside the deep plunges of grief. I think the peaks, from those bad relationships, are the dopamine lobe bombings and they only seem like peaks because of the steepness of the downward slope.

Or maybe it’s grief and having someone you love, die in front of you, confused, scared, too stubborn or to hopeless, try to save themselves, refuse treatment, say fuck it all with their addictions, illness, pain and suffering, unable to see past them. This one in itself has a varying degree of sadness I have found, from the primal piercing hole in your gut, that makes you howl in rage, loose your mind, destroys you for a time, or the sadness that is more gentle, more accepting, but also primal and sharp, intense. I have found the degree of sadness varies widely with the circumstance, the person. And is too often accompanied by anger.

Least Sad

Not sure if I can tell you what the Saddest Thing is. But I can tell you what the Least of the Saddest is, regrets.

Regrets? Yes, regrets. Memories of things you wish you’d done better, things that you did wrong. When you chose the wrong path. Regrets in their nature are a hope, and fodder, for growth. A brick, that is, if you will, a block of strength in your moral nature. Maybe regrets are all that save the rest of us from being sociopaths. Or Narcissist

Of course not to say that sociopaths, and narcissist don’t have regrets of a sort. They regret losing you, because then you are out of their control, they regret not getting more out of you. They regret how stupid, how crazy you are, how stubborn you are, and how you make them do it. To them it is very sad that you just can’t see it from their view point. That they only did it for “your own good”. You know, despite of course that “you” in the “your own” really means “my own good”.

So yes, regrets wins leading the Least Sad Parade. Perhaps coming in right behind is the Accepting kind of sad, the letting go kind of sad.

Personally speaking

When speaking of romantic love, familial love, of friendship love. Eros, Storge, Philia, or Agape; name the love, honey, and I’ve experienced every single of the above sadness with that love.

Regrets? Not so many. But a few mistakes in life. Some quite profound, shameful even. Regrets from when I let myself and others down, hurt someone, did not react as gracefully as I should of. Others more trivial, missed opportunity, a trip down a garden walk I shouldn’t have taken, a meltdown instead of a discussion …

Either way I try to avoid repeating my false steps, or beating myself up over them. I have to accept that I did the best I could, I’ll spare you the “in the circumstances” part of that rationalization.