The Happy Little Girl

Once upon a time, there was this little girl who was happy. Well, she had this smile that stretched across her whole entire face. That smile of hers happened to brighten everyone's day of whom she came to come across with, whether it was just walking past someone in the street or talking to someone; she just seemed to have this knack that made everyone else around her smile. Well, now that smile has been wiped off her face and she is left as an eccedentesiast; someone who fakes a smile. She has reached her lowest point she wants to die but she tries to be strong and brave. Whilst she remembers all of the pain she has felt over the years, the worst is the feeling you get when happiness is ripped away from underneath you, leaving you falling down a bottomless pit. Well, she decided that she hated feeling that way, she didn't like losing control, but then again it wasn't that simple. So it was decided then, that she was going to block every sign of happiness in other words she became fearful of happiness. It seems kind of silly being afraid of something that you cannot touch, or see but maybe her fear wasn’t so silly after all. Maybe it was reasonable but the thing is it was holding her back from feeling the sunshine of life for she blocked any speck of ray that came her way. One day she finally admitted it to someone who she had learnt  to trust and he smiled at her almost as if he thought it was funny but he still had that caring look in his eyes that's when he said to her “Don’t be afraid, don’t fight those rays, instead let them come freely and grasp onto every moment for you don’t know how long you have!” he said “Go out there and live life to the fullest, go crazy, fail in something and do it again but most of all have fun and be happy because that is what makes you feel alive." The happy little girl that's me or who I used to be.

I wrote that four years ago, which I guess is when I started having great difficulty in recalling what it felt like to be happy. The advice I was given then, whilst it makes sense to me it's very hard to allow those rays in, but I am trying, I'm trying not to fear happiness.

It was four years ago when I made a decision, one that has protected me as well as hurt me; I chose not to be happy. I discovered that battling my anxiety and bursts of depression was easy, I could handle it, the hard part for me was feeling happy.

More so then than now, I remember how I was constantly haunted by the idea of how I must never have been happy or the fact I couldn't remember what happiness felt like. However, I do remember what a dear friend once said to me, it was a time in which I was suffocating from the cloud of smoke around me. My friend held my hand as I was gasping for air, she said "If you know you are sad you must have experienced happiness at one stage or another for you know that you are not at the highest you could be and therefore what is saying that you won't feel happiness again?" Up until recently I've held this bit of insight as hope that I will be happy again, I now see it in its entirety.

I now ask myself; What is it to be happy? What does happiness feel like? Is happiness a misconstruction? Have I been happy before? Do I deserve to be happy?

Many have laughed at me when I've voiced my questions, but there are a few people who truely know me and they understand where I'm coming from, you see happiness I suppose is a foreign concept for me.

"To be happy again" something I find myself saying in my sessions with my psychologist when she asks me things like "what would be the opposite of feeling how you are now?" or "what's an alternate option for you rather than suicide?" For a long time I believed happiness was the answer, it seemed simple the opposite of sadness is happiness and therefore that is what I should want to be. However, now I realise that happiness is rather unattainable, and it seems foolish to put so much hope into something for it's like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. Despite being able to see the happiness in others, I cannot find it in myself and I think a big part of that is the weight hanging over me of the decision I made four years ago; to not be happy. Rather than working towards happiness, my psychologist has helped me discover what is less scary than happiness; contentment. Whilst many of you may understand happiness and contentment to be the same thing, for me they're not, being content is something I can understand and to be honest it's less frightening than happiness. I'm not entirely sure why this idea of working towards me becoming content rather than happy seems possible, perhaps it is because my brain is still programmed with the decision not to be happy or maybe it's because for me there is less baggage to the word content. Whatever the reason is whilst I still fear happiness, I'm able to work toward feeling content, which is proving most difficult often with me taking two steps forward and one step back. But the point is I am trying and I am working toward being content, which I guess all I can ask.

I no longer wish to be "happy", rather I work toward being content.