Cover art by @lefthandedhoneymoon
hap·py
/ˈhapē/ adjective
feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.
I knew a boy once. He was funny and mysterious. I told him I loved him though. I don’t truly believe I did. The things that happened and the people I had lost caused me a great deal of pain at the time. They say bad things come in threes, I think it’s safe to say those bad things came in dozens. When it rained, it poured and though I promised myself it could’ve been worse -convinced my weary soul that my feelings were unwarranted- the undeniable truth was that by the end of it all I was different. That there’s simply no explanation for me, I am scarred, damaged goods, not worth the greater things in life. I felt indebted to darker times. He, although he had a rough go of it, was separate from all of that. At least for me. The world in which he and I existed was so much kinder, without flaws. I could be beautiful, I could smile and really mean, I could be worth something to the God I lost hope in.
Looking back, I realize the multitudes at which I was wrong for placing the pressure of my own will to live on a single person but when things were all said and done, we were my escape. I spent countless hours listening to love songs convincing myself that he was my knight in shining whatever and that I needed saving. I spent far too many nights losing sleep just to catch a moment or two to tell him about my day and sometimes when the lonely stars of nighttime rolled around, I’d lie there thinking about our first and only real date; about how he held me close and looked at me as if I was the only person in the world, a memory I thought I could die on. It’s only now, of course after the sheer embarrassment of telling a trauma bond that I loved him passed over, that I realize all I wanted was to feel just a little ounce of that happiness stuff I saw in the movies.
In the end, all we want is to be happy.
We do or don’t do things, make changes, leave places or people all just to achieve some sort of fantastical reality that we can’t quite put our finger on but we swear to high heaven it’s out there. I ask myself all of the time, what if we never find that happiness? What if it’s all just conjured from our mind’s wild capability to pinpoint a location that doesn’t exist? What if this happiness we desperately look for, this escape from today’s pain is just guaranteeing tomorrow’s anguish? Have I not learned anything from the former B.O.M.D? I can’t speak for who I was or even who I will be, but I can speak for the me that is typing this article at 2am over a steaming mug of english breakfast and she, from what I can see, will be alright; her will to survive is no longer based on anything other than herself and because of that she is closer to the glorious, receding mirage that is this thing we call happiness.
