Happiness can sometimes be a Struggle

I don’t know where to start really.

It’s been one thing after another, lately.

If it’s not a flat tire, it’s an emotional breakdown.
If it’s not a total screw up at work then it’s a I can’t sleep ‘cause my thoughts just won’t shutup.
If I don’t sleep for 16 hours then I walk around like a mummy only half paying attention to all the wonders happening around me.


I had a emotional breakdown the other day because I feel like I’m missing out on life.
I slept for three hours that day and spent the afternoon with a new addition of some of my favorite people; I had a wonderful time. 

When I got home I fell asleep on the couch. 

And then, after I woke up, I proceeded to have an emotional breakdown because the entire day I felt like this cloud was distracting me from what was happening around me.
The curse of working an opposite schedule of most normal people caught up with me again that day.

And I cried and cried. 

I felt like I was missing out on life. Like I was living it, but from behind a curtain, only able to enjoy half of what was going on around me.
Being half engaged because I only got three hours of sleep that day.

It’s not something that stops either.

There are so many moments where I feel I’m missing out on life.
My brain even anticipates this “missing out on life” feeling; as the time comes closer, my moods gets more bitter because I know it’s coming.


I started reading this book.
So I’m only two chapters into it right now, so you can’t call me a professional or anything on the topic.
But essentially, the book revolves around this premise: If you’re unhappy with your life, it’s your own fault.

That statement, so elementary, hit me in the face.
You’re in complete control of your life. . .

"Life is not supposed to overwhelm you at all times. Life isn't meant to be merely survived--it's meant to be lived."

"This doesn't mean you become selfish. This doesn't mean you discard your faith or quit believing in something greater than yourself. What it means is taking responsibility for your own life and your own happiness... if you're unhappy, that's on you."

And it hit me, really hard actually. Harder than it probably should.

Here I am, twenty-three years old. This is my prime time to live; to be smart and plan for my future, yes. To work and make a living; to be useful to the community, to individually become someone apart from my parents, something that’s followed me around my whole entire life (I mean, that is the nature of childhood, after all).
But it’s also a prime time to live the way I want to live; to make decisions for myself based on myself.

No, not wholly and completely selfish decisions.

But decisions that won’t make me look back on my twenties and be like, “wow, my twenties sucked.”
I want to be able to look back on this time of my life and remember the lessons I lived and learned from, the changes I made to my life because of my lessons learned, and the beautiful life I decided to wholly and completely live.

I want to be in love with my life.
And yes, I am fully aware that life can never be a beautiful picture of perfection.
But if I’m not happy with an aspect of my life, I must realize that I have full control and power to make decisions, to enforce change, to move from one scenery to another.

It’s true that it is not the outside world that makes your life beautiful.
Blatantly said, you can be a piece of poop and put yourself in a beautiful Biltmore flower garden, and your still a piece of poop.
Changing your outward scenarios isn’t what makes life happy.

In the same token, if your surrounded by negativity all the time; surrounded by circumstances that deplete the happy from you, you gotta change something.

And I think the first step is that realization.
That you are in complete control; that you can choose to stay or choose to go.
No one else runs your life; you do.

And please, for you bible bangerz our there, know I’m not placing myself above the ultimate One who is in control.

But even then, I believe he is more so the rudder than the sail.
But that’s another post for another day.

With that realization in mind, that I am in control of my happiness, it is my duty to change what I must if happiness is a goal.

Thank you, sweet boy, for also reminding me that I am young, and the situation I am in right now is not my permanent situation.

I have a lifetime to enjoy.


And here I am, working on the things I know I need to fix.
Sometimes I’ll fall, I'll get bruised and scraped.
But I don’t have to live there.

And along with the other self-improvements I’m constantly trying to work on, know I’m a work in progress.
I have to learn to be patient with myself.

I’m working at it. I promise.