Happiness

I find that happiness is more fragile than unhappiness. When I am really happy, I do not want to piece it apart. I do not want to fully consider why this particular thing brings me joy, or whether it is replicable. Thinking too hard about happiness generally dampens the feeling, and other people can easily steal it away with just the slightest negative comment.

Yet, when I am miserable, I try to dissect the reasons behind my emotional state. I want to understand what has made me unhappy, and I want to fix it. It is very difficult for anyone else to improve my depressed moods, so other people’s comments fail to affect me. Misery is quite a steadfast emotion for me.

Thinking about all of this has led me to the conclusion that, rightly or not, I consider happiness to be illogical and unhappiness to be sensible. I don’t like to ruminate on my happy moods because I believe that doing so will dispel them. Any negative comments made towards me when I am happy I use as “proof” that I have no logical reason to be in a good mood. I believe also that when I am unhappy, it is because I am discouraging myself from engaging in self-deception. If anyone tries to talk me out of my bad moods, I always think they just don’t “get it.”

When I was really suffering from anorexia, I thought that if I tried to get better, it would be because I was hiding from the “truth.” I did not deserve to eat, I believed, so the right and noble thing to do was to starve. I suspected that other people knew I did not deserve to be healthy, but they would just not admit it to themselves. Thus, I considered myself to be a kind of martyr for the truth—the truth being that I did not deserve life.

I am still stubborn for the truth, but I try not to equate happiness with an unwillingness to be truthful. Until I am able to be strong and confident in my happiness, I will just have to be careful with my fragile joys.