How Happy Are You Right Now?

I believe happiness is a state of mind.  It's easier to be happy when meds are working, stress levels are low, and loved one around us are being supportive.

 

I am very happy right now.  I have finally, finally gotten the monkey off of my back called Seroquel.  I am very happy that my Trileptal is working on it's own.  I appreciate all the good things in my life.  For the most part, I don't have to struggle with my Disorder, but do find myself holding my breath for the other shoe to drop.

I would like to meet other people with my dissorder and more often ! That would give me more feed back than from family and others that say they understand but will really never fully know !

 

This has been a life time of what should not have been's or could not have been's or did not have to be's

All me life, during my depressions that seemed to never end, I'd repeatedly said "I just want to be happy.  Why can't I just be happy?  I just want happiness even for just one brief moment, some happiness is all I want." to never get it.

 

When young, I didn't know what happiness was exactly but I knew what it wasn't and it wasn't what I was living in and through each moment.  Some days I'd literally feel as though I'd go mad hearing the clock hands ticking (still do some days), knowing that each tick was one second less of my life and that each tick lost was spent in something far less than happiness.  That elusive, never to be, happiness that I could just see the tail edge of as it flitted around a corner on the far horizon.

 

Now that I've grown much older and survived many things and have come out of many other things on to the other side... I no longer seek or desire happiness.  It just simply isn't for me to have.  I have grown both contented and yet complacent in what there is of my life.

 

Yet, in being contented and complacent - there lies conflict still.  I am contented with all there is and yet have fallen into complaceny (?sp) which causes unrest in still wanting... something better. 

 

Instead of desiring happiness, I desire only better.  It's a much smaller thing to ask and yet, still ever as elusive as the happiness I once so desparately sought.

I am content- the contrast is to years of miserable unhappiness and desperation in a job I hated. I have my illness reasonably well managed and I have excellent, responsive care. But, I have to get "unstuck" which I am trying to do, in order to be happy.

i am absolutely MISERABLE right now.

Uh Oh. Happy. This moment as I type= It's OK-happy. And see my two my two personal two never-fail-happy suggestions at the end...but otherwise LOL. This was THE BIG ISSUE of my first year in therapy post-bi-polar- diagnosis three years ago. The Great Lament every week in session with tears running down my face (I was in the depression part of PB): “I am so unhaaaaappy. I will never be haaaaappy again” Posit of therapist: “Have you ever been happy in the past?” My answer would be a reluctant, sobbing, “Yes.” His retort: “Then is it conceivable that you COULD experience happiness again in the future?” My answer would be a sullen: “Yes.” Then he would look at me and I would look at him and I would start crying again. And then go out to the car and cry for an hour more. As for now in general? Good-days, bad-days like any one else. Very few all-sobbing sessions thanks to therapeutic logic and good meds. But pure-pure happy moments? I catch it on the run. Joy happens, and isn’t foretold. As for my get-happy remedies: Singing always nudges it forward, as does talking to my very clueless cats.