Here’s a link to the song, give it a listen before reading.

When I heard this AJR song on the radio when it first came out, I loved it. Not just for the catchy pop tune that instantly got stuck in my head, but for the way it painted my reality in a way I had never heard in a song before. More than anything, “Way Less Sad” is a song of celebration – the trumpets are blasting and you feel the excitement to reach this stage in life when you are way less sad. And that that is an achievement.

Part of my daily life as a depressive is taking my anti-depressants. I’ve taken pills like these every day for well over a decade. I’ve heard the term “Happy Pills”; I’m not sure if it is still used today, but when I first started taking them it was common. It always bothered me because taking these pills does not make you happy. You don’t take your dose and feel a rush of happiness. What anti-depressants do is much more basic – they lessen the depression symptoms enough that you can go to therapy and do the work to build towards something like happiness. In essence, the medication makes you “WAY less sad”.

Don’t get me wrong, that “way less sad” feeling feels pretty good when you’ve been crushed by the depression for months or even years. And it gives you the energy to start developing coping skills that you can use in your daily life to start to feel better and function better in society. What I love about the AJR song is that it is a celebration of reaching that point – as the trumpets blare, “Don’t you love it, don’t you love it? No, I ain’t happy yet, but I’m way less sad.” It’s not about celebrating happiness, but that middle point when you get enough relief from the depression to start doing something about the happiness piece.

I’ve tried many different anti-depressants over the years, and I’ll probably try a few more before I’m done. And there’s a moment when that new anti-depressant kicks in and you start to feel WAY less sad, and you start to see all the possibilities around you that you couldn’t see before because the depression was too all-consuming. And it’s a beautiful moment. I’m not happy yet, the journey is not over; but it’s almost like I can hear trumpets playing as I walk outside and take in this new world around me that I hadn’t been able to see for a while. And it’s this moment that this song perfectly captures.

It’s a feeling/moment that I’m struggling to capture even after four paragraphs, so hearing it on the radio made me feel seen in ways that I don’t normally encounter in mainstream media.