The Secret Life Of Dejection

Tucked away in the familiar fog of forgotten fondness, where tossed-away dreams pile up like autumn leaves, Dejection took up residence.

Garbed in rejection, it wore a shroud woven from teardrops and threads of broken hearts. Although it recognized its existence as somewhat shapeless, it seldom saw itself as so.

Shapeless was without points, and Dejection knew it was not pointless.

Every fading dusk found Dejection brimming with cautious optimism, a brittle hope that tonight—yes, tonight—would be the watershed moment. The breakthrough where the forlorn felt seen, the desolate understood, when its quiet whisper would finally resonate: “I’m here, and I feel your pain; let’s share this weight together.”

But tragedy struck in the very moment of connection.

Instead of comfort, people felt a shiver of resentment and bitterness. Like an unexpected slap—jarring, cold—it left not an aftertaste of understanding but one of frustration.

A haunting echo of Anger lingered in the air, leaving people raw and misattributing the surge of unwanted emotion to scorn, never even suspecting Dejection’s true intent.

This muddle of identities weighed heavy on Dejection. Every mistaken shout, every raised fist, made its heart sink deeper into a lonely abyss.

The cycle was like a dizzying dance that sped up with each turn. The more people misunderstood it, the thicker its shroud of sorrow grew, the sharper the illusion of Anger appeared.

Dejection felt trapped in a never-ending loop, its quest for clarity and acceptance only tightening the knots in the web of mistaken identity.

Its rally for recognition was hampered by hasty judgments, a product of its own eager urgency as much as their swift conclusions. Lighter touches or subtler visits seemed futile. In labeling it “Anger,” they may have missed its essence, but Dejection also came to recognize its own role in fueling the cycle it so despised.

This urgency to be acknowledged had morphed into a self-defeating drumbeat, with each foray amplifying the very resonance of Anger they mistook it for.

Part of the blame lay on its incorporeal shoulders; lost in its frenzied yearning for connection, Dejection had grown tone-deaf to the escalating discomfort it induced. Perhaps if it had paused, giving them room to breathe, the cycle might have slowed, allowing a sliver of space for mutual understanding.

After years of this sorrowful spiral, Dejection noticed itself thinning, fading like an old photograph. It had become a distilled essence of its own sadness, invisible but potent. On a silent night that seemed like any other, Dejection confronted its fate—a road with no turns.

A maze with no exit.

In a quiet, existential surrender, Dejection ceased to be, diffusing into the cosmic fabric like ink in water. A subtle, unexplained lightness seeped into the world, misattributed by many to the retreat of Anger, never realizing it was Dejection that had lifted its heavy veil from their lives.

Perhaps it’s a cautionary tale for us all—to pause, to reflect, to seek to understand before we label, before we react. For in every shadow we hastily call Anger, there may lurk a Dejection yearning to share our burden, yearning to be seen. It is a call to recognize the hidden faces of sorrow in our own lives and in the lives of those around us.

Because, in the end, Dejection never wanted to be the villain; it only sought to be the quiet companion to our most solitary moments.

The tears it never saw, but always felt, became its silent, poignant legacy—a final act not of despair but of an aching, misunderstood love.