Then started the long, slow journey toward coming to grips with the lonely, painful life I had been living. I had to be honest with myself, which is sometimes hard to do, about some rather tough stuff. I also had to make some life changes - often in the blind - that I could only hope would lead to a better place than where I was. I focused on one big issue or goal at a time and kept "Finding Happy" as a hopeful goal for the future. And, to be truthful, I often forgot about it.
Recently I met up with some long time friends. In talking with them about the ups and downs of the past months, I realized that somewhere along the way I found happy. I don't know when I found it, so I have a few thoughts.
I never truly lost "happy". Happiness is an emotional response. It's inside. I can't actually lose it. But I did turn off happy. And every other emotion. For a huge portion of these past years my emotional responses were dulled so I could cope with pain. It meant I didn't feel all the weight of sad that I was harboring, but also that I couldn't feel happy. It's not that happy didn't exist, but that I couldn't readily identify it as a feeling separate from anything else.
Happiness is not something that can be found outside of me. If I say "if I do x I will feel happy," that's a momentary human emotion response to stimuli. In those times of enormous pain I look to distractions ... stuff that fills life up with emotion-evoking moments in hope that they give a burst of "happy" to carry me through the wreckage of the rest of an emotionally dulled existence. Doing fun things is not wrong - in fact having enjoyable pastimes is important. But true happiness is more visceral than that. It is core. I can't expect that I would have core responses to momentary emotional highs.
Happiness - and every other emotion - needs space and time to be fostered. I am a complex, fully emotionally developed person. I might have three emotional responses to the same situation or stimulus. In a period of life where the weighty, life changing stimuli came in waves, I am not surprised that I went into overload. But I didn't stay in overload. I made proactive choices to go about doing things and engaging with the world around me in ways that are healthy, open, vulnerable, and thoughtful. I became more organized with how I spend my time and with whom. I gave myself bandwidth - space - to truly feel about what I am doing rather than just doing. I avoid toxic interactions and dive into healthy ones. I make conscious decisions about nutrition and exercise. I acknowledge my experience in this world is precisely that: my experience - that I am free to share with others or keep to myself.
At the beginning of this this year, I decided that if I were to have one overarching theme it would be "Finding Happy" and that the way to do that was first "Finding Feeling." I gave myself space and time to feel again, and then one day realized that "happy" was one of those feelings.
