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The Well of Sadness

There is a place to which you go even though you know you should not. You are driven by an unquenchable thirst to feel, to somehow connect with that which once was, but is no more. Across a desert of loneliness you cross, feeling the searing heat of the unadulterated sun upon your back, while you try in the bright light of day to make sense of the loss and alienation that has become your life.

The vast expanse of endless sand is strangely comforting, though, because it places distance between yourself and that which you know will cause you pain. The desert has no memory, and so we can become lost in a wilderness of our own making, where the bad things cannot harm us. The starkness allows no place for monsters to hide.

Inevitably, though, you must drink. The memories are the only thing, you believe, capable of rehydrating your withered life, this shell of a father, this man both with child yet without child, this curious remnant of family living all alone in his forlorn man cave. Left behind. Left behind.

Thus, you make your way to the Well of Sadness. There the water is cool and refreshing. It lets you experience ever so briefly the happiness that you felt as a parent once upon a time, in that place that is displaced from you in time. It reminds you that it was real, that even though you wander the desert now as one cast aside, it really happened, that once you were Daddy. Yet the water in the well is unsafe to drink. Memories that bring most parents delight cause intense pain, and you find yourself doubled over cursing the ladle that brought the water to your lips. And though you know that you must stop, the Well calls unto you, and invites you to drink. “More.” “More.” And you do not resist.

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