I. Motionless

Yesterday was a stormy day, I knew something is not working. I tried my best to put one foot in front of the other, but the effort was just too much. I finally crashed and cancelled all plan. I was just still. Unmoving. Not in tears. Not unraveling.

Eventually, I tried my best to go through the motions. Made the tea. Took the call. Replied to an email with the correct mix of urgency and warmth.

Then in the evening, a friend said, “Cheer up, yaar. It’ll all work out.”

I nodded. I know how to nod. But then I said : Do you think I haven’t tried that already?

We say things like “cheer up” to one another as if cheerfulness is a switch that only needs finding. As if sadness is simply a lapse in logic. As if the fog will lift if we just think sunnier thoughts. But the fog is not always waiting to lift. Sometimes it settles in and makes a home of you.

II. The Unnamed Ache

We do not handle sadness well, culturally.

We can name burnout. We know how to speak in the tidy grammar of self-help. We say resilience and self-awareness and hold space, and sometimes we even mean them.

But melancholy, the quiet kind, the kind that lives under the skin, rarely gets that sort of fluency. Melancholy is not a spectacle. It does not beg for attention. It lingers. It folds laundry with you. It changes your posture. It sits quietly beside you while you try to feel normal.

And because it is not dramatic, we assume it is manageable. We offer water and playlists. We walk. We journal. And sometimes, it helps.

But sometimes, nothing happens.

And that nothing carries its own weight.

III. Grief is Structure, Not Mood

Neuroscience tells us grief is not just emotional. It is architectural. In The Grieving Brain, neuroscientist Mary-Frances O’Connor writes that when we lose something or someone, our brain does not simply register absence. It continues to search. It maps and replays. It expects. The neural pathways that once anticipated a voice or a presence or a routine continue to fire.

When the world does not match that internal map, the brain does not quietly correct. It aches. This is why grief feels physical. it is not metaphor. It is circuitry. And it is not always grief in the dramatic sense. Often it is what I now think of as non-event grief. The friendship that slowly faded. The version of yourself you quietly outgrew. The familiar routine that no longer fits. The sense that something has ended, even though everything appears intact.

There is no ceremony for these. But the body still knows. The self still pauses. The grief still arrives.

IV. Why Cheerfulness Doesn’t Help

When someone tells you to cheer up, they are often asking for relief. Not for you, but for themselves. We have been conditioned to feel urgency around pain. We want to frame it, tidy it, solve it. We do not know how to stay beside it without wanting to make it prettier. But sadness does not always want improvement.

Sometimes it wants quiet company.

There is a scene in Winnie the Pooh that stays with me. Piglet finds Pooh on a hard day. Pooh says nothing. Piglet does not fix or cheer or advise. He simply says, “I’ll sit here with you.”

That is what real presence looks like. No wisdom. No timeline. Just presence.

V. What Helps, If Anything

There are a few things that help. Not always. But sometimes. And never in the way you expect.

Naming helps.

Even clumsily. “This is grief.” “This is something old I have not resolved.”

“This is nothing specific, just an ache.”

Naming gives the fog a border. It gives the nervous system a thread to hold.

Ritual helps.

Not elaborate routines. Just one small thing repeated. A candle. A walk. A song.

Not for healing. For rhythm.

Slowness helps.

Not the performative kind of slowness, not rest as productivity.

The kind of slowness that says, you do not need to be anywhere but here.

Companionship helps.

Not advice. Not motivation. Just someone near. Someone who does not rearrange your sadness. Someone who lets it be what it is.

VI. Melancholy is a Kind of Memory

I no longer see melancholy as the opposite of happiness. It is a form of memory. It is what lingers when something mattered.

Sometimes it is the sound of your father’s handwriting, invisible but exact. Sometimes it is a laugh you haven’t heard in years

Melancholy asks to be carried, not cured. We are too quick to try to get over things.

The better question might be: can I live forward and still remember?

That is not regression. That is a deeper form of resilience.

VII. If You Are in the Fog

If the fog has not lifted. If you are slow to speak or smile. If your memory is sharp but your spirit feels blurred.

You are not lazy. You are not broken . You are not behind. You are simply living in a moment that asks more of you than usual.

You do not need to cheer up. You do not need to explain yourself. You do not need to force insight from a wound that is still forming

You are still here. That is enough.And if someone says, “Cheer up,” you can say, “I’m not ready yet. But I’m still here.”

Sometimes that is the most human thing you can say.