Today I was reading on Marquis de Sade after I listened to Sadeness Part I by Enigma. The song feels like intensely questioning and analyzing the thoughts and ideas of Sade. It examines the fundamentals of humanity, love and existence. After some time, I started wondering whether he was depressed or mentally afflicted. He could have been, or maybe he was too libertine in his acts for the time and too non-human for his ideas. Maybe the point was the liberation of the human soul rather than the affliction of pain and suffering upon others. Maybe we miss the whole point of his life. Maybe we are still missing the idea of liberation and love. Why do we find it hard to love each other?
Then at some point, I started finding sadness pleasurable. Pleasurable with hope, with future, with a certain quality of redemption. After all, it's a feeling that we are meant to experience and adore. But then what makes it different from depression? Then I had a bout of depression, suddenly I felt the pain, the excruciating pain of existence. Pain without pleasure, without hope, and the certain quality of redemption. Suddenly I found myself scared. Scared of people. Scared of myself. Thoughts became hopeless and pessimistic all of a sudden. I remembered the way I woke up yesterday, with the stinging pain that was so intolerable that I wished for death rather than being alive. Pain so unbearable I wished I stopped existing altogether. Pain that sometimes makes me feel crumbled unless I engage in some soothing words from another human soul which suddenly pulls me back into the reality where hope exists at least for them. Numb, incapable of affection, empathy and love where your whole life feels like a lie that was never meant to be. Even the fundamental pleasures of human existence are denied. That's what's different from sadness. In sadness, your mind is still in your control. You have redemption somewhere sometime. In depression, things are beyond you. There is nothing much to do but to hope that the pain will end soon or that you will end soon.