The Comfort in Being Sad
Why We Find Sanctuary in Self-Sabotage which has become instinctual for the youth.
In Nirvana’s Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle, Kurt Cobain sings, “I miss the comfort in being sad.” I think about that line often due to how deeply it seems to resonate with me, and with our generation as a whole.
Self-sabotage has become instinctual for the youth. There’s relief in staying broken, in existing below the limits of expectation, because expectations are unbearable, and nobody expects greatness from someone surrounded by unread books and unfinished projects, with crumbs on their couch and laundry scattered across the bed.
The most you can hope from a person like that is a promise to take care of themselves before they go on conquering the world. To get up, make some tea, and sleep. That’s the comfort of being sad, you’re not pushed to go beyond your limits.
The reason behind seeking this comfort is structural in nature, as always.
Inertia feels like mercy in a society that demands constant motion, where success is quantified in views, followers, and brand collaborations. Fatigue has become our collective inheritance, despair has become our method of self-preservation. There is no pressure in sadness to be somebody remarkable.
With the political and economic climate worsening worldwide, it’s no wonder Gen Z is burnt out. We’re so young, yet we feel impossibly old. Gone are the days when your twenties meant stability, and the beginnings of a picture-perfect family. Now, you’re lucky if you find a tiny apartment that doesn’t cost a fortune. Love has turned transactional too; modern dating resembles a battlefield of manipulation and mistrust.
What is there to be happy about, then? What is there to look forward to when every day feels like the world is tightening its grip on the necks of the young and tired?
There have been attempts to curtail the suffering through pathology. Still, I would argue that the rise of mental health awareness, while necessary, has brought new complications.
The vocabulary of diagnosis has become cultural currency. Anxiety, depression, or any other mental illness has been repurposed into identity. Overmedication and overidentification have left many suspended in a kind of chemical limbo, recalling the tranquilized discontent of 1950s American housewives: numbed just enough to keep functioning within a system built to exhaust them.
Psychiatry, at its core, operates transactionally. Medications regulate but they do not redeem. They merely dull the symptoms without fixing the cause of the illness.
And so, the pursuit of fulfillment remains hopelessly human. It’s found in connection and in creation, but even those have been destabilized by the digital spectacle, with authenticity getting flattened by curation, and everyone’s self-worth being eroded by comparison.
The result is a generation performing functionality, insisting we are fine while internally resembling Mia Goth in Pearl (2022), wide-eyed and manic, screaming “Please! I’m a star!” as she’s dragged from the stage after a failed audition.
Perhaps sadness has become our baseline rather than a temporary interruption because it's the last space where we’re allowed to be honest. To be sad is to opt out from the exhausting theatre of self-improvement.
It’s where the performance ends, and something human, if not hopeful, still remains.
About the Author
Shabeeh Zehra
Analysing portrayals of mental illness and female rage in literature. Her own work centers on examining taboos and horror in fiction, examining how they mirror broader cultural anxieties. She draws inspiration from confessional poets and from the intersections of literature and psychology. One of her more obscure interests is fictional houses, which she sees as extensions of the characters' minds; she also swears by black coffee and Sylvia Plath for curing writer's block. Her current project is a nonfiction work compiling cultural and historical studies of taboo subjects, including serial killers, mass hysteria, cults, and dictators.