whatever

Today marks the one year mark at my job, and I must admit it’s a strange feeling.

There has been a vast portion of my life where I wasn’t happy. Now let me explain what being unhappy means to me.

As a child I was always hungry to learn. For the most part this hunger was well fed, as I poured over books, spent hours talking to adults learning about their lives, learning new skills and all around being an over achiever. This was to cover up the abuses I suffered as a child from a close family member. This was the beginning of a storm to come.

As I grew up, i was given a lot of responsibility. I started watching my younger brother somewhere around eight, and helped take care of my ill grandmother until her death in 2002.

Now you may be thinking, ‘That doesn’t seem like a lot...’, but during all this, I was in the process of being introduced to my estranged mother, her new husband a few months later, and being uprooted from everything I had known up until this point. Coupled with moving to a small town where cliques were a very real thing as a fat, awkward kid, this became very problematic. My grandmother’s death truly did rip my family apart, and now I was a girl on the brink of becoming a teenager who had lost (for all intents and purposes) her mother, her brother and all her family and was living with abusive strangers.

This began the downward spiral of depression, sadness and hatred.

When I was in middle school I started smoking. I was pretty low key about it because I didn’t want to influence my ‘friends’. We were pretty young still, and I didn’t want them to have any more reasons to try and ditch me.

In high school, I was becoming more isolated. I had a couple good friends, but I hid a lot of things from them out of shame. I started using drugs, and very quickly started using very hard drugs on the DL. My mum and step dad worked out of town, so they were gone early in the morning, and usually didn't get home until very late at night. I was pretty free to do whatever I liked. This began the downward spiral of drug use.

As I got more and more dependent on using, I started getting more and more distant from people, and by proxy, getting more and more sad. I was never content, and I thought that using drugs might help me feel more alive, and help me love myself more. When this didn’t work I attempted suicide for the first time. I wasn’t successful, and I became the saddest I’ve ever been. It lasted a very, very long time.

Fast forward three years. I’ve moved to a new city, gotten out the other side of a heroin and cocaine addiction, several more suicide attempts, and met who (I thought) I would spend the rest of my life with. I was sober, in love and still the unhappiest I’d ever been. I worked myself to the bone as a chef, and most of the time spent all my free time alone in (our) apartment on my laptop drowning out life with this blog. When I found out I was pregnant with my son was the end of it for me. I had reached my rock bottom.

In a moment when someone is supposed to be the happiest of their lives, I was miserable. I was being accused of adultery by my s/o, and I felt like I was being fooled by the universe in some cruel joke. There was a moment where I thought maybe I had gone on a bender, forgotten about it and OD’d and this was my hell. I love my son to the ends of the universe, but there was a lot of sadness in my heart that he couldn’t outshine.

Let’s skip another couple years. I’ve been struggling with depression, PTSD, a heart attack and another miserably failed relationship. I packed up and ran away again. And then one more time just for good measure. I have alienated myself from nearly everyone I know, and literally put hundreds of miles between us. This was the first time in a long time that I was truly alone. I don’t know what possessed me to apply to college, but I did, and for a while it made me happy(ish).

I ended up dropping out of school when I couldn’t handle the pressure anymore, and got a part time job at the mall. It was a shoe store, where I was definitely out of my comfort zone. I was struggling with interacting with people, but I was getting my happy back. Slowly but surely...

Things at this job weren’t exactly the way I had hoped, so I started looking for another job just to supplement my time. I ended up working at a novelty shop, and was applying at other places in the mall just for shits and giggles. Turns out the last place I applied would be my (so far) forever home.

I started working at a skate shop, and as I look back on the last twenty or so years of my life, I can’t remember being this happy somewhere I wasn’t abusing drugs (or anything else for that matter). I want to believe that the universe put me here to learn things, and I have, but I keep the thought tucked away in the back of my mind’s pocket. What if I ever get sad again? What will I do to overcome my sadness?

There is something very bittersweet about my sadness. As much as I hated being so upset and sensitive all the time, and constantly feeling like I wanted to die; I have no idea who I am without it.

For the intent of this post, I want to try and be positive. I have met some very, very kind people on my journey here. I constantly meet new, and wonderful people; ships passing in the night. All the people are just silhouettes; there for just a moment before the sun shifts and illuminates the shadow again.

I am grateful for my journey. I am grateful for my happiness. I hope I get to carry it around for a very long time.

I just can’t help thinking that something will come along sooner or later and steal it from me because I don’t deserve it. I was not a kind person. I have not been a kind person to a lot of people because I wasn’t ready to admit my sadness was ruling my life. For this I am truly, sincerely sorry. I try so hard every day to make it up. I am really bad at apologies, so many of these people will forever (and rightfully so) think I’m an asshole. I own those things, and take note. I try and project goodness back out into the world so that these things can come back to them in a less direct, karmic way. I like to think that these people will find peace and forgiveness in their heart for me after feeling my love come to them from far away.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that I deserve to be happy whether I like it or not.