On Melancholy and the Quiet Seasons of the Soul

I’ve been thinking a lot about melancholy lately. Not the sharp kind that arrives like a sudden storm, but the gentle, familiar one; the one that appears the moment the air turns colder, when the light grows softer, when life slows down just enough for old memories to knock on the door.

A few years ago, I moved to a different city. Everyone said a new place brings excitement, possibility, a chance to reinvent yourself. And that was true. I felt my heart waking up, stretching, reaching forward. But underneath that warm excitement lived a quiet ache; the melancholic weight of leaving behind a place where I once felt rooted.

It took me a long time to name that feeling. And yesterday, while listening to Eylül Görmüş and Tuğçe Arslan Üçerin talk about melancholy in their podcast 1 Kitap 1 Film 1 Şey, something finally clicked.

They said: to feel melancholy, we must first have known joy. That what we call melancholy is often just the echo of happiness; the tenderness of remembering who we were in a moment that has already passed.

Suddenly it made sense. Why winter intensifies this emotion. Why I miss my old streets more when the days get shorter. Why my memories feel louder when life becomes softer.

Slowing down does something to us. It creates a doorway, a pause, where the past peeks through. And maybe that’s why melancholy isn’t a disturbance, as we sometimes fear, but a state of being. A way of looking at the world more carefully, more honestly, with the heart slightly open. In these quiet seasons, we turn to art more. To books, to films, to long walks under pale skies. We become more thoughtful, more porous, more receptive. Maybe that's why melancholy has always been tied to creativity; not as suffering, but as an invitation.

A return to the intuition inside us. A reminder that our emotions do not pull us away from life, but deepen our experience of it. It reminds me of a line attributed to Edgar Allan Poe:

“And so, being young and dipped in folly, I fell in love with melancholy.”

Because maybe melancholy is not the enemy of joy but its hidden companion. A soft echo that stays with us, reminding us of who we were, and paving a subtle path to who we are becoming.

As I write this, I realize: Maybe the city I left is not something I lost. Maybe it’s something I carry; a soft soundtrack underneath my days, a source of warmth I return to when the world grows quiet. Melancholy, then, is not sadness. It’s memory. It’s presence. It’s the slow unfolding of who we once were meeting who we are becoming.

And perhaps that is its most beautiful form.

With love,

 Nagehan

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*Inspired by the 1 Kitap 1 Film 1 Şey podcast + Poe’s melancholy whisper. If this reflection resonates with you,

 you might enjoy the podcast that first stirred it ; you can find it here.