Finding my Happiness

At some point in my life I heard someone say that it was difficult to be your own person while being involved with other people, specifically a significant other. I don't know who said it, or where it came from, but in the last 8 months, or however long it's been since I was last in a relationship, I've not only been able to understand this statement, but I've been able to make it true for me.

As a child, people knew me as the happiest baby around. Pictures and videos of me during my early years depict a little girl smiling, squealing, waving, and laughing. My life was joyous, carefree, innocent, and beautiful. People were happy to be around this cheerful, well-behaved child, and I look back on those fuzzy memories with fondness.

However, during my middle school and high school years, depression, insecurities, and self-loathing plagued my everyday life. I found myself in and out of friendships, relationships, acquaintances. I found myself in and out of superficial happiness and heart wrenching sadness. I found myself stuck in a world of in betweens: not quite here, not quite there, not sure of where I was going, and not sure where I was coming from. I was never quite happy.

For the past 8 months or so, I've been single. I made a promise to myself the day that Ryan and I broke up, and that promise was to love myself, take care of myself, and find myself. I felt lost. Coming in and out of relationships that I never really understood nor I was ever really happy in, I had no concept of what kind of person I really was. I knew I enjoyed tennis, I knew I liked to ski, I knew that I loved my family, I knew that I was smart: I knew a lot of things about myself, but I never really knew me. It's easy to describe someone, but to truly understand someone? That's much more difficult.

In the past 8 months, I've kept that promise to myself. I've done everything that I've wanted to do. I haven't let anyone hold me back, not even myself. I haven't let society and its expectations keep me grounded to what people might consider social norms. This time has been a time for me, for discovery, for understanding. If I have learned nothing else from this time in my life, I've at least found who I am. I am a happy person. By living for myself, I have rediscovered the joy I once knew as a child. I no longer put my wants and needs on a to-do list or let them stand in a waiting line. They come first, they are my priority, and nothing else is. That may seem selfish, but I've learned that by not putting myself first, I become depressed, insecure, and dejected, and when I become those things, other people cannot appreciate me, or enjoy being with me. If I'm suffering from those emotions I become snappy, mean, clingy, emotional, and dramatic. If I'm happy then I'm laid back, interesting, a good listener, and healthily detached from other people.

Even if I enter into another relationship and I lose my happiness again, at least then I'll know that it exists, and I'll know how to rediscover it. I'll know who I really am. I am not a clingy, over-dramatic bitch, so I shouldn't feel insecure about it.