I think I am afraid to be happy......

How does one know if they are truly happy? Like who defines happiness? When you look it up in the dictionary it says "feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.”  What if there are only moments that bring me pleasure and only moments that bring me contentment. Does that mean I am half happy?

So, here’s the thing we started out friends (name that song). No seriously if there are only moments that bring you happiness does that mean that you aren’t really happy or is happiness something that you can truly only experience in moments.  Or are you happy but other feelings are overshadowing it and making you forget that you are actually happy. If you are still reading, stay with me here this is going somewhere. IF YOU ARE GLANCING OVER THIS START READING NOW!!

I don’t think I have ever known what it means to be truly happy. My childhood wasn’t the greatest well the parts I can remember. Adulthood has been very interesting to say the least. There were moments of happiness and are moments of happiness, but it seems like they are just moments. Some of them linger but for the most part, the happy feeling fades. It’s not that I am sad, angry, frustrated, or any other negative feeling but I don’t feel happy. It is almost as if I feel nothing. Have your ever been in that place?

There were times that my happiness lasted a while, but it seems like the longer my happiness lasted, the bigger the event or thing was that made the feeling of happiness go away. For example, three years ago I had finally walked away from my marriage, and I started to feel like I was finding myself again. Although COVID stopped a lot of the outside activities I wanted to do, I was finding me, and I was happy. Then out of nowhere my dad dies. Unexpectedly dies and it honestly wrecked me to my core. Our relationship (well that is something I will write about on a different day) it had its up and downs, but I was a daddy’s girl.  Another example, after some health battles I finally got the news, I was waiting for and was ecstatic, okay like, was ready to do it all. But there was a part of me that was waiting for the other shoe to drop. I kept telling myself that it was just a trauma response, and I got to the point where I was read to shout it from the rooftops only to end up in ICU and find out that the news I received was not accurate.

Just these two examples are why I think I am afraid to be happy. I smile, I crack jokes, I hold my head up, but as the doctor said my insides are a war zone. It’s funny because he was talking about the physical, but he gave me the phrase that I have been searching for to describe how I mentally, emotionally, and spiritually feel. It is all a war zone, and I think it is because I am afraid to allow myself to be happy.

But I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I truly want to be happy. I don’t know what it is going to look like. I am sure it will feel awkward, and I am sure it is going to be a challenge...But I am going to choose happiness because I deserve to be happy AND SO DO YOU! Don’t be like me and be afraid, choose happiness, choose joy, CHOOSE YOU!

Authentically us,

Samanthan & Carl