This Is Me Accepting That I Can’t Be Happy All The Time

It’s raining outside my window and a chilly wind creeps up in my bed. I look up from my phone and something hits me like a tidal wave. “Is this emptiness again?” I ask myself. It has to be. I smelled it this morning when I realized I forgot my medications in my apartment and didn’t bring them with me on my way to my hometown.

This feeling of solitude shouldn’t be a shocker to me at this point. I’ve lived with it my entire life. I can make a stand-up comedy full of dark humor about it for half an hour. But some days are harder than the others. And tonight is one of those.

I accepted years ago that I’m not going to be happy all the time. I’m not going to fake smile and make fake laughter to hide my sadness. It’s not my thing. I don’t play that game. I know my life isn’t going to be full of stars and glitters and fireworks and colorful flowers every hour of the day. I understand how the world operates.

I know sometimes I’m going to be unhappy. Sometimes I’m going to be bored. Sometimes I’m going to have that moment when I’m not happy but I’m not sad either; it just feels, I don’t know, like it’s nothing. And I guess I’m okay with that. I’m okay with being unhappy and bored and feeling nothing.

I cringe at people who pretend like they have their shit together. They will begin talking to me about how great their lives are without me asking a question about it in the first place. And it’s not that I’m upset to hear something positive. It’s just that they know that I know that half of what they’re telling me is a lie. And this act of lying is totally unnecessary. It’s painful to watch.

I’d rather wear my pain on my sleeve than hide it and cover it with something shiny. I’d be proud to show it to people because it screams, “Hey, I feel like a screw-up today, but I’m trying.” My sadness is relatable. It gives everyone an idea that I’m still a human being, living in a real world.

I will not be consistently happy. I will always have something I wish I have. I will look in the mirror and highlight what I don’t like. I will ask myself why he can’t love me back. I will keep dreaming about the most ideal place. I will convince myself I’ll die alone.

I am not happy because I hate that I’m scared of the unknown. And even though I know that this fear is normal, it still doesn’t make me less afraid of it. I am not happy because I am not fully satisfied with everything that I have. And even though that makes me sound so ungrateful, I know one hundred percent that we aren’t all satisfied in our lives. So in a way, we’re all in this together.

We’re all broken on the inside. We have something to complain about. We screw up. We’re not perfect. And admitting that truth is okay. Admitting we’re not happy is okay sometimes.

And I guess what I’ve been wanting to say is that I am not happy today, or tonight, especially right now. But tomorrow I will try. Tomorrow I will try to be happy one more time. And I guess that’s something.