Happiness

Happiness;  easy concept, difficult to achieve.  Anyone can come up to you and ask,  "What makes you happy?" and you will probably be asks to list off a number of things. Many of these things might make us happy, but it doesn't mean we have achieved total happiness with our lives.  So if things don't makes us happy,  what does it takes to get there?

For me,  my idea of total happiness consists of feeling fulfilled in what I an doing every day,  finding an activity that stimulates me mentally and physically,  being surrounded by people who love and care about me,  and being able to help other people.  I feel like I have had most of these things at some point in  at my life.  I have had moments of being truly happy; however, with most of my life being clouded with trauma, they have been fleeting and bringing my walls up higher. I get very weary about it.  There's always this little voice in my head that tells me it won't last,  and it's normally right. 

I have had a pretty negative outlook on my life with many moments where I have doubted that I could ever be happy, but staying in that negative headspace only reinforces that I probably won't be. It has taken me a long time to accept my part in my depression.  While I do not have control over the things that have happened to me,  I do have control over my reaction to them.  For years,  I have been the victim and have done nothing to get out of that identity. My eating disorder didn't help that either. I became very dependent on other people and expected them to take care of me and make me happy. My internal processes did not match my independent, strong exterior.  When those people left,  so did my happiness.

It has taken me until the age of 23 to figure out that I am in control of my own life and letting in or removing things that make me miserable. I also can make myself happy without the assistance of others.  After years of chasing people and things to try and make my life fulfilling,  I learned that that's not what life is about.

Maybe happiness is one of those things that we shouldn't chase.  Maybe it's something that, with a little patience and living in the moment, will come naturally to us. For me,  after spending 10 years of my life hating myself and beginning the journey of recovery,  I have finally found myself in a place of being truly happy with how things in my life are going. It has been a long time, and I am always terrified for the next bad thing in my life to happen. But for now,  I choose to live in this moment. If I don't, I may miss out on my main goal- to live a life in happiness.