I have three therapists, a psychiatrist, take a multitude of mental health disorder medications, and you think I’m happy? No, I’m fairly certain I’m not. Then what does it take to be happy?
Good question.
I think the people that know most what true happiness is are still learning what life is- children. When did we stop giggling so much every day for any number of reasons? And I don’t mean a chuckle here or there, but huge lung expanding laughs, out loud for the whole world to hear.
Remember those kinds of laughs that you used to have so frequently in your youth where you would have tears streaming down your cheeks, your sides hurting all the while not being able to catch your breath? With every gasp for a breath, in your mind re-living what made you laugh in the first place over and over again?
When’s the last time you had a week of daily laughs like that from childhood, or even a few days in a row?
I, myself, cannot answer that question with even a glimpse of certainty.
How sad.
I want to be in that state of mind again where everything, even the smallest thing, is hilarious enough to laugh with no control, just letting it all out for the whole world to hear.
But that will probably never happen in the near future, and it hasn’t happened anytime in my recent past.
As I sit here writing, I hear the very loud, unencumbered laughter of the neighbor kids. They don’t care what people think of themselves, and are oblivious to the reality of this country and what happens when you move out on your own and have to fend for yourself. Perhaps that’s when the laughing slows. When you realize what the world is really like, not just your own little kid world where the biggest worry is how much time off you have before school starts again, or where the next piece of candy will come from.
I will spend the rest of my life chasing what I used to have and didn’t realize…childhood laughter from being happy and for the most part, carefree.
How did I come to acquire the several mental health diagnoses I drag around with me all day, every day? They surely didn’t all come on at once!
So, what happens to us as we age? Were we born with these things hiding deep inside of us, just waiting to come out at the right time, like those ugly cicadas popping out of the ground after years and years of silence, only to annoy the bejesus out of everyone? At least the cicadas aren’t bothered by themselves (that we know of). Mental illness is quite different than those noisy cicadas.
Mental illness is born inside of ourselves and makes no sound until it’s ready to be heard.
The people who are closest to us might start to notice a difference in us while the mental “cicada” is emerging, sometimes as fast as a freight train, other times, slower than the wind inside the eye of a hurricane.
Happiness slips away through our downward spirals, tears, and silent screams. Happiness is taken over by the evil that inhabits the gelatinous gray matter inside our skulls. Things have changed by incredible bounds, and not in a good way.
That is all I know.
So, no. I am not happy. And I can’t answer my own question of what it takes to be happy.
What a bleak realization.
