My sadness
A poem, maybe
My sadness is knowing that if you don’t perform, I will need to force you or let you go because otherwise I’d have to carry your load and I’m already at my limit. It’s designed that way.
My sadness is my father telling me when I was little, that he spent his childhood terrified of a nuclear war and knowing 30 years later, nothing has changed.
My sadness is never googling the weather because it’ll expose me to today’s news and they’re never worth reading.
My sadness is being bombarded with propaganda everywhere I look, and having to use all my energy to not get swayed from what I know to be true.
My sadness is running dozens of kilometers a week so my brain can process.
My sadness is reading thousands of poems, hundreds of philosophy books, and countless papers to educate myself but with everything more I understand, this makes less sense.
My sadness is raising a kid into systems I no longer believe in.
My sadness is people hoarding power everywhere you look: politics, at work, in the field of Content Design. Out of fear? To numb their pain? To feel a little more in control? Stop.
My sadness is leaving my baby with caretakers for 40 hours a week just so I can “make a living”. Am I not already alive?
My sadness is wanting to write copy, but it doesn’t pay enough.
My sadness is barely seeing my friends because we’re all just too tired.
My sadness is being an honest, vulnerable leader who shares openly, and knowing that won’t ever get me as far as being less human would.
My sadness is all of you arguing about who has the right to oppress whom.
My sadness is this greed, hate, resentment, otherness, separation, disconnection that grows and grows and grows within our souls.
My sadness is we’re all in this together. I can’t win if you don’t. And I want you to. I really do.
My sadness is knowing all of the above to be true at 17, wanting to escape, but giving this world another shot, making it all the way to the top only to see: I was right. This is wrong.
And so
— my sadness is complete.
Nicole is a Content Design Lead and host of the Content Rookie pod. She lives in Sweden, where she writes poetry and chases her 1-year-old around her clover lawn. Website. Twitter.
