Happiness.

It isn’t always sunshine, butterflies, and rainbows.

One of my goals for 2016 (not resolutions- we already know how I feel about those!) is to read more. I’ve been taking recommendations from people and searching through lists of books that someone out there in internet land thinks everyone just has to read in their 20s. When I was a kid I was an avid reader, but grad school seemed to knock that out of me thanks to the seemingly endless reading assignments I was constantly completing. And then there was that year and a half period of recovering from grad school that I needed to find my way back to the books! I realized this week that the book I’m reading in the background and the book I just finished reading both focus on the seemingly basic concept of happiness. This just so happened to coincide with a really impactful conversation I had with my therapist about what it means for me to be happy. You could call it coincidence, or the stars aligning at the right times, but I know that it’s just Jesus working His magic, because, as John Lennon tells us, when I grow up I want to be happy.

I recently saw The Happiness Project sitting alone on a shelf at Half-Price Books, and couldn’t help but pick it up and find my way to the checkout. Though I haven’t really seen this pop up on many of those must read lists, there was something about knowing that there are others that have to work towards happiness, that drew me to this bestseller, telling me that I had to read it. Furiously Happy, on the other hand, featured on many of those lists, despite being released just recently. I was not only drawn in by the grinning, taxidermied raccoon on the cover that just seemed to be calling my name, but also by the content. Furiously Happy advertised itself as a “hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety.” I’m sure that many people would read that description and would perhaps find it a little strange and unsettling to be making fun of mental illness, but I couldn’t help but smile at the connections I’m sure I could make to my writing and my life.

I call the Happiness Project my background book. After starting reading it several weeks ago I realized that though the content was important, and was something I definitely wanted to read, it was just too slow going to keep my interest. So rather than decide to give up on the read I figured I would keep it in the background, picking it up here and there to see what snippets of guidance it could give me in those moments. And so far this has been working great! I mean when isn’t it helpful to read that it’s important to be constantly pursuing your passions. For the author this means finding and reading books, whereas for me this means involvement with basketball (something I will be writing about in the near future, so watch this space!). Though the book is designed to help folks jump into a year long, or otherwise, project committed to happiness, I know that’s not something that would work for me at this point in my life. My focus on recovery is much more important. So for me, this book serves to provide little reminders that happiness is an important part of recovery, and there are so many innovative ways to fight for happiness in life.

Furiously Happy on the other hand isn’t such a slow read. Every spare second I found myself gravitating to Jenny Lawson’s hilarious but oh so true words. I don’t know if I could come close to giving a description that does real justice to explaining the wonders spelled out with such humor and compassion, so instead I am pulling out a piece from the introduction that I think speaks to (my) life so clearly:

Can you hear that? That’s me smiling, y’all. I’m smiling so loud you can fucking hear it. I’m going to destroy the goddamn universe with my irrational joy and I will spew forth pictures of clumsy kittens and baby puppies adopted by raccoon's and MOTHERFUCKING NEWBORN LLAMAS DIPPED IN GLITTER AND THE BLOOD OF SEXY VAMPIRES AND IT’S GOING TO BE AWESOME. In fact, I’m starting a whole new movement right now. The FURIOUSLY HAPPY movement. And it’s going to be awesome because first of all, we’re all going to be VEHEMENTLY happy, and secondly because it will freak the shit out of everyone that hates you because those assholes don’t want to see you even vaguely amused, much less furiously happy, and it will make their world turn a little sideways and probably scare the shit out of them.

— Jenny Lawson

Is it weird for me to say that snippet, and the whole book in general, is one of the most comforting things I have read recently? It’s not even necessarily the decision to just be happy that offers me comfort, because if it was as simple as that, we would all be doing exactly as so many of those inspirational quotes tell us, and choosing happiness each and every day. But I don’t think that’s the message Lawson is giving. As I understand it, being furiously happy doesn’t mean constant sunshine, butterflies, and rainbows, rather it means practicing bravery to give yourself your best shot at happiness. The comfort for me comes in knowing that I am not the only one struggling to find happiness. And I am not the only one trying to be brave, and sometimes falling short. But it’s even more than that. I am not the only one using humor to explain my struggle. I am not the only one who uses writing to educate others. And I am not the only one who has things to celebrate that have come from depression and anxiety. I only wish I was cool enough to own a taxidermied raccoon that I could scare people with. Although I do have a doll named Mary Beth that doesn’t just come out to scare people on Halloween and maybe hangs on my office door year long…

A couple of weeks ago, when chatting with my therapist about why I always seem to end up sabotaging myself when I’m doing well in life, and not reaching this place of happiness I so desperately crave, she introduced her theory on the upper limit of happiness. You see for me, when I’m doing well for a period of time, let’s say with my meal plan, I somehow find myself slipping. She suggested that these hard slips are because I struggle to tolerate that amount of success. As she spoke these words to me, it just made so much sense. Throughout my life I have learned that once I reach a certain level of happiness, it ends with hurt, or comes crashing down quickly. So as I have stumbled into adulthood I have learned how to unconsciously destroy that happiness myself, because surely if I end it, it somehow won’t hurt quite as much. Hence, I have an upper limit of happiness, or as my great friend Emily would say, a glass ceiling, that I can’t seem to get above, despite trying so desperately to find my way home where I will have a happy heart. It makes me a little sad to realize that I continue to sabotage my happiness, with my eating disorder or otherwise. But I also don’t blame myself because, as my team would say, I was meeting a need. I was finding a way to survive. The thing is I don’t want to survive. In my life worth living, I want to thrive.

When I think about my journey home and quest for happiness, I realize that I don’t need a year long happiness project, or to commit to being furiously happy all the time, but rather I need recovery. Because recovery is my route to my life worth living, where I will allow myself to experience happiness as it comes to me. You could even say that it would be like breaking through that glass ceiling, tiny indent by indent, working away at the glass (although I admit that a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory style glass elevator would be a heck of a lot cooler, faster, and more dramatic). When I come home to my life worth living, life won’t be sunshine, butterflies, and rainbows all of the time, because that isn’t realistic. Sometimes life will suck, it will hurt, and things won’t go my way, but I will be able to embrace the sunshine as it beams down, watch the butterflies fly around, and be in awe of the great privilege it is to see a rainbow emerge from the darkness. Because I won’t need to earn that happiness, and I won’t need to shut it down before the butterflies hatch, because I am enough, just as I am.

I’ve learned that if happiness is the goal, recovery is a collection of action steps. Many, many action steps. One of which is being brave and continuing to write and tell my story. Because happiness is a journey, not a destination. And I’m not on this journey alone, just think about my team, my tribe, my God, and the many others walking that treacherous path to recovery, which is a pretty incredible and comforting realization.

In my life worth living I will know and believe that I deserve happiness, just as I am.