This was last week's Steppin' Out.
I've done so much (more) work on myself since then, but since I've been posting my trials and tribulations on this site, I thought I'd share.
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Why is it that some people can never be happy? Well, not that they can't be, but that they choose not to be, and when faced with the option for happiness they stick out their tongue and spit in its face? Or is it that we learn that happiness, if attained, will eventually lead to the downfall of everything else? I often wonder what's wrong with me because I've found a person who makes me ecstatic, and sometimes I still want to be sad.
Perhaps it's partly because I was raised Jewish. Yeah, it's weird to blame your religion on your lack of happiness, but there is something about the Jewish religion that makes you believe that suffering is the way to go. I mean, a lot of what Jews talk about has to do with pain and suffering, whether it's been caused to us or by us, it's a common theme in our survival.
Or maybe it's because I get my head wrapped around warped ideas like the one in The Kite Runner. The idea that the authors mother was so happy she began to wonder if happiness is something that you have too much of, can it only cause sadness and pain? It's this idea that I can't be too happy because if good things are happening, bad things will happen as well, that makes me worry too much. And then the more I think about that, the more I realize that the more I worry, the more likely it will be that I will have one of those self-fulfilling prophecies and then I'll actually get what I believe I deserve, even though it's not what I want or deserve at all.
Maybe I'm just crazy, but then again, if I think that I am, perhaps I will become just that. So, even though I've been thinking it more and more these past few days, I'm going to try to stop thinking about the cause of my happiness and why I shouldn't be happy, or if I'm crazy for thinking such thoughts. Still, I can't explain why, in the midst of the happiest relationship I've ever experienced, I can find the time to still be miserable.
Like this past weekend, when celebrating Thanksgiving away from everyone except the man I love, I couldn't always love being in the one place I knew I wanted to be. I think it was partly due to the fact that it was the last day of my birth control pills and I was heading into a week of placebos, and partly it was due to the fact that I know our fantasy life in a loft in Philadelphia was coming to an end. It wasn't that we were fighting or even suffocating each other, because we weren't. Yet at one point I went to some dark and lonely place and I didn't want to come back out to play.
At first he tried to lure me back, but it wasn't some place I was willing to go. By 2AM, after spending hours sulking by myself on the couch, I decided to give up my pouting, and I crawled into bed with him. It was really the place I wanted to be, so why did I run away from being there in the first place?
Is there something taboo about being happy, really happy? Is there some reason that I can't go there? Or is it just me thinking too much because I finally have what I want, and now I don't know what to do with myself in order to create drama, which, in my life, seems as necessary as breathing and sleeping. Perhaps I don't know how to live a drama free life, or perhaps I'm afraid that if I live a drama free life, I'll grow old and boring. There's got to be a simple reason why I keep continuing to make things so complicated, but I've yet to figure it out. If my feelings about loving him are simple, why do I make things so complex?
Posted by jamye at December 5, 2021 04:28 PM