Search This Blog

February 8, 2013

on happiness, the learning not to fight it part.

yesterday jim told me, "you're unhappy letting yourself be happy."  

happiness is scary.

anything that feels foreign is scary.

when you spend so much of your life being unhappy and feeling sad and doing everything in your power to not feel a single thing when it does sneak up on you, and this is often how it appears, out of nowhere and out of your control, it's terrifying.

but when you do feel true smile for no reason, flood of calm come over you multiple times a day, crying at the sound of a kind word blessed beyond words happiness you want to scream it. you have to.

you have every right to scream it.

your happiness has nothing to do with anyone else. you must choose to allow yourself to be happy. you must choose to say, i deserve this just as much as anyone else. it sounds very simple. 

it is anything but. 

i am choosing to give myself permission to feel the joy that encompasses my life. and this joy is because my life has changed 10,000 ways in the past year. change is scary, but it is always necessary. the opposite of change is nothing and i've had enough of that to last a lifetime.

nearly seven months ago i wrote about happiness: being afraid of it, wanting it, rejecting it, being open to it, finally accepting it, and the enjoying-it part. all of these parts are equally difficult. except once you get to the enjoying it part then comes the fear of losing it part. that one is especially tricky. but fighting anything is a sign that we don't think we deserve it.

who are we trying to convince?

when i was sad/when i am sad sometimes it's all i can write about. but thankfully, the same goes for when i'm happy, when i let myself be happy. and it is a choice. everything is a choice. and everything comes down to self-love and self-worth.

i don't always feel as strong as my writing may portray. sometimes the things i write on here are really goals of the person i'm trying to be

these are my prayers.

the beautiful thing about prayer is that it can be shared. it's more powerful when it's shared. life is more powerful when it's shared, even the heavy parts.
    
happy is the goal. strong is the goal. balanced is the goal. and there are beautiful days when i feel all of these during the course of one. and then i have weeks where it seems like balance is the furthest thing possible.  

life happens. and it's hard enough without convincing ourselves we don't deserve to be happy. it's easy to let ourselves become hard because we're afraid. fear is poison and it will take over our lives if we allow it. 

stop allowing this. 

one day at a time, one step at a time. it's all we can do. 
 
 it takes time and work, actual work, to recognize happiness, to embrace it. to hold it to your heart and say, i remember you. i’ve missed you. i’m choosing to keep you around.

i wrote those words nearly seven months ago.  

the last thing jim said to me yesterday was, "don't be so rigid." i'm still learning. i'm trying. 

 i'm getting there.

No comments:

Post a Comment