Member-only story
Awakening to Happiness
I spent most of my life in a semi-miserable fog.
For the past ten years I have been happy. It’s not just because that’s how long I’ve been with my amazing husband, but it’s a big part of it. I met him a month after my fiftieth birthday.
That’s a long time to be unhappy.
I wasn’t exactly miserable for the years before that, but misery was always an addictive option. I would sink into it like a feather bed when life didn’t go my way. It sucked me down like a nice, warm swamp.
My thinking was that as soon as I had X, I would be happy. X could be a relationship, or a beautiful house, or a fabulous wardrobe.
Every time someone rejected me, or I saw a house I couldn’t afford, or didn’t have the right outfit, it was further proof that I could not be happy. It was my cue to sink into self-indulgent misery. Maybe I would binge eat. Maybe I would become depressed and lose my appetite. I would lose weight, attract another heartbreaker, and the whole cycle would start over again.
I chose friends in order to stay unhappy also. People with deep insecurities, anger issues, or drug addictions. I would get upset with them, but they would always be the ones to dump me or ghost me. Then I would be upset about that.
