Happiness

 

  Hansa bosbach (@Workinghans), from the Twitter Writing Community, asked me this dreaded question: What does happiness look like to you?

I had to think about this one for a while.
It hasn't been easy to find my natural voice to write the answer to this. How does one who's lived a terrible life for so long, answer such a question? I've had to rewrite it several times. I hate this fucking question! It's worse than when people ask me where I see myself in five years. I almost blew the most recent interview I did when they asked me that question, because I told them I can't see myself in five years. It hurts my brain to even try. They also asked me: What gets you out of bed in the morning? I have to pee, you fucking twat! 

And so that sets the tone for how I plan to answer what happiness looks like to me. It doesn't look like anything. I'm just now learning happiness for the first time in my life, and it's so fleeting, it's like chasing after a leaf blowing in the wind. I'm hardwired on doom. My childhood was so bleak and under-nourishing that I firmly believe there are parts of my grey matter that will always be a dull and distant pulse. Some things will always be colorless. And I know just how sad that sounds.

Look... I'm not saying I've never experienced happiness. I have. But there has always been an element of self-destruction that has sat beside it, like an old friend you just can't break up with no matter how wrong they are for you. She's always pulsating beneath the surface of it all. She doesn't even need to talk to me anymore because she is all my senses; the quiet lurker living in my subconsciousness. 

When I brought my first born home from the hospital, I started crying uncontrollably. The sheer joy and love I felt for this fragile human life form, who could easily die on me, was so foreign to my mind and body, that I had to weep because I couldn't process the intensity. I developed this terrible fear that she was going to be taken from me, because how could something so beautiful happen to me without horrendous consequence following?I had nightmares about her drowning or running out in front of a car. And her birth also opened Pandora's box on some repressed memories and feelings. Dissociation had easily kept me detached from the emotional pain of the abuse I suffered growing up. Becoming a mother took a sledgehammer to that, and I suddenly had to start facing it with no idea that this was what was happening to me. I assumed I was simply going mad, like everyone in my family seems to do.

I just accepted it. Told myself as long as I held it together enough for my kid...

Then when she was four years old, I was raped, and my life began to spiral out of control. Almost two decades would go by before I could fully see what was happening to me, and that it wasn't because I was crazy. Between that and now-- I've had another child and been married a second time, and yeah-- there have been some moments of happiness. Ever fleeting as they are. Ever the watercolor that bleeds across the blank canvass of nothingness.

Jim Carrey made a statement I absolutely believe in 100%. Quote: "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer."

I used to think- If I just had more money. If I just had more time to do fun things. If I just had more functional friends. A less crazy family. I better attitude. If only I could abandon everyone and everything, and travel the whole world... I'd be happy. 

And then I write something. Most of it comes from a place of pain or regret. Some of it I turn into a thing of humor because it takes the sharp edges off the darkness just a little.  I see the way I affect people. How I help them. Guide them unintentionally. And it's in those moments that I understand how important it is to have a sense of purpose in this life.

All those years I was busy surviving, I didn't get to feel that. So much time spent trying to keep my head above water. I didn't have the understanding of what it really means to give of yourself. To have a purpose. Why would that make someone happy? That's what I'm just now learning. When I step outside of my own head and give myself over to some other cause or some other person, I find my spirits lifted. Even on days when I'm feeling really low.

Remarkably, giving to others, simply, and with no hope of gaining anything back in return-- makes me happier than anything I've ever done for myself. It heals me faster than any kind of therapy I've tried. By nurturing others... I feel nourished. This is no codependency thing I speak of. I'm not talking about how a covert narcissist enables the malignant narcissist or addict, in order to get high themselves. I have boundaries now. I take better care of myself than I ever have. I'm not trying to rescue anyone. But I'm also not as self focused as I used to be. I'm not hurting in that way anymore. I believe in who I am now and don't need to be validated for that. There's such a freedom that comes from deciding not to be this hungry, starving person anymore.

To get to a place where I can say: I can live without you, but I'm glad I don't have to. There's no fear in loss the more you understand that ownership is not the same as love. No one will ever belong to you. People are not where happiness comes from. Perception is. And my perception is just beginning to wake up from its hellish dream state. That old friend that sits next to all my experiences, with her quiet doom, is beginning to evaporate.
So what does happiness look like to me? It doesn't look like anything just yet. It's the endless possibility of a blank canvas... waiting for some watercolors to bleed.