Negative Space
It’s funny. I never actually felt happiness for the first 42 years of my life. This past September I felt it for the first time, and I think it really changed me as a person. Until I knew what happiness felt like, I had no frame of reference to grasp how deeply unhappy I am.
And, I am absolutely crushingly rendingly unhappy about almost everything in my life and the world at large. I like myself, now. So, that’s one thing. I like some specific people. I like specific things, and some general concepts. All of this helps. But boy, it’s hard to carry.
And, that’s the damnedest thing: I get it now. This is a big step up, just getting to the point where I can wrap my head around how awful I feel every day. To be able to engage with it, rather than it just being this constant formless gnawing pain that made life impossible.
That doesn’t make things easier in and of itself. But it’s such a change to be able to say, I am not happy. To know what that means.
It’s a start, anyway.