Happy.

Happy.

What is being happy? What does it mean? Is it something you earn or find? Is it something you're given, or something you buy? Or is it something simpler, something small and overlooked – scribbled, maybe, in the margins of a dusty old book?

I think it's different for everyone. Why shouldn't it be?

Everyone is everyone, and no one else is me. Everyone is unique. Shouldn't their feelings be, too?

My happiness is not your happiness, even if our grief is the sometimes alike.

My happiness is changeable, and never quite the same.

It is sunshine, on a clear autumn day, surrounded by the unlit pyres of dead, burning leaves and sleeping grass, and the cool quiet. It is coffee with a close friend, and laughter and impossible bets. It is a stupid stuffy of a germ, as magical as it is mundane, with expressive plastic eyes and silly eyelashes. It is my sister, come home from school on the other side of the country– dorky as ever, and easily thrice as awesome. It is living on my own – most of the year, at least- in a city I adore. It is a dark chocolate truffle after a bad day, when all the rest of the world tastes like ashes. It is a Disney movie when I'm sad or lonely, a hug when I didn't even realize I needed one.

Simple, obvious things, those – but not all.

Sometimes, my happiness is a quiet thing. Sometimes, it is the absence of a thing.

It is sitting in my room, thinking to myself, and not once hearing the voice of self-doubt. It is thinking about those I hold dear, and not listening to that little sound of self-loathing and unworthiness, or of how unimportant I am to them, how expendable I must be. It is looking into a mirror and thinking that I look pretty today, and that I don't need to change anything. It is abandoning those who cling like limpets, loathsome and parasitic things beyond any friendly help and set on breeding their own misery.  It is the quiet realization that not being able to help everyone doesn't mean that I'm a failure, or that I'm a bad person. It is remembering to breathe, and to think less about the bad things –and maybe more about the good. It is realizing that I deserve better, that I deserve more, than what I have given myself.

It is fending off the headspaces that crippled me, and finding one day that, after over ten years of fighting, I'm actually starting to win.

When my headspaces – those periods of time when the only thing I seemed to feel was pain and a sadness that was more grief than sorrow, beyond the insidious self-loathing, insecurity, and self-doubt- were at their worst, I made a list.

It was a list of things that made me happy. I didn't fill it out for a long time. Weeks. Nearly a month and a half. Probably closer to two.

I started in red ink, angry and in pain. That pen died, though, part way through.

A blue one replaced it on the day I decided that I'd had enough.

I finished the list a long time ago. I don't use the book I wrote it in anymore – I don't need to. I know what's in there, the sad, angry, horrible things I wrote because there was too much pain and nowhere else for it to go. Half of those pages ended up stained in tears – some of the ink is blotchy now.

I don't need to reread it. I remember what's important.

Just before New Year's Eve, I sat down with a blue pen and wrote something worth reading down.

I haven't had a headspace in nearly two months. I haven't loathed myself to the point that it almost physically hurt, or wondered how many people would benefit if I suddenly didn't exist. I haven't cried until the wee hours of the morning or felt the need to run and hide. I haven't looked in a mirror and hated my nose, or my skin, or the way I'm shaped. I haven't counted the handful of pounds I am over my "ideal" weight (whose bright idea was that?) and turned down a food I loved so that I could feel less hideous. I don't feel hideous anymore. I don't feel ugly, or unwanted, or unimportant, or less intelligent.

I still feel a little lost. I'm still unsure. And, yes, sometime those feelings come back. Sometimes I get sad or jealous or angry. Sometimes I don't feel as pretty as people tell me I am. Sometimes I don't feel as smart or as wanted as I know I am. Sometimes I think the universe has a law that says I can't have two good days in a row.

But it's okay. That happens. That happens to everyone, in fact, so it's okay to feel sad, sometimes. It's okay to have bad days. It's okay to have a lot of bad days, even – as long as you don't let them get to you.

I feel okay.

Maybe that's not happiness in the strictest definition of the word, but it works for me.