You’re not happy unless you’re miserable.

“You can’t set sail with your anchor down” — Kacey Musgraves

Photo by Jakob Puff on Unsplash

When I got home last night, I did the usual cleanse.

Green tea. Kombucha. A whole lot of water.

I told myself I needed to cleanse. Get the alcohol out of my body and wash away that bad food. But as I reached into the refrigerator to grab the kombucha, it kinda hit me.

I didn’t need to cleanse my body.

I needed to cleanse myself from you.

I don’t think I ever quite grasped how much my friends or family could weigh me down on a given day. How their moods impacted me. How I took on their stress.

But it occurred to me recently that some of us are addicted to negativity. The stress becomes more and more appealing. We fall back on it as an excuse or a crutch. It makes us feel better about our own lives. It slowly kills us but we think it’s helping.

Some people cannot be happy unless they’re miserable. Every day is a new opportunity to be a victim. To blame the world for everything that happens to you. A new chance to curse your luck. A new day to hate everything around you.

Negativity is addictive. It’s like a drug. It seeps in and grips you. It can be ruthless and grating and awful and strange and mean. It makes us into the people that we don’t really want to be. It transforms us into the worst versions of ourselves.

The worst part is that miserable people want you to be miserable too.

They make memes about pettiness. They glorify getting together and hating the world together. It’s all a little bit of a mess isn’t it? How cool and trendy it’s become to take down other people?

I’m uncomfortable being part of that. I’m even more uncomfortable surrounding myself with people who don’t really want me to be happy, they want me to join them in their negativity.

There is no reason to be happy when you’ve accepted miserable.

I refuse to accept it and I hope you join me.

You made it! Thanks for being here.

I pride myself on practicing what I preach. Follow me here on Medium as I share my challenges, growth and discoveries on the daily.