What makes you happy? That is a question that I ask myself at least 100 times a day. What makes you happy? Are you happy? What will it take to get there? Can you get there? Why aren’t you happy? These are the questions that I ask myself all day, everyday. And the way I see it, these answers change all the time. Within the day itself they can change. Many people see happiness as being this attainable thing. Like if you work hard enough, you can have it. And I don’t think that's true. I think that happiness is just a feeling. A temporary emotion, just like being sad or angry, it isn’t always there. You shouldn’t have to work to be happy, you should just be able to find it. Or at least that's what people like to say. But I like to say that those people are wrong. Happiness is just a state of mind. You can find happiness in your day to day life. A smile here, a laugh there, but happiness isn’t always easily kept.

Lately, I have been focusing so much on trying to be happy. So much that I actually stress myself out by trying to force the happy. I have these talks with my friends and I realize how happy they seem, I see people that just come off as some of the happiest seeming people. Now that doesn’t mean that they are happy, maybe they’re just really good at faking it, or maybe, they are honest to goodness happy. And I get so jealous because that’s all I want in my life, is to be happy. Don’t get me wrong, I have a great life and I know that 100%, there isn’t much more I could ask for, I have good friends, a great family, I’m healthy and I have a bright future. I take amazing trips and get to see the world with people I love, I have almost anything I could ask for, material wise. But at the end of the day when I’m about to go to sleep, I think to myself and I can’t help but think about how UNhappy I am. I relive my day in my head and I remember the moments of happiness and I think for a minute how great that was, but then I revert back and remember how happy I don’t feel now. It was just a moment. Just a glimpse of what I really crave. And then I am stuck thinking to myself, ‘Is that enough?’, is a moment here and a laugh there enough for me? Because I sure as hell don’t think so, but that seems to be all I get.

What I’m saying is that I want to be happy so desperately that I’m forcing myself to find happiness when I know that I just need to wait to let something come along that makes me happy. But then the question remains: how long until I lose that happiness? How long until that feeling dissipates and it’s over? Because that always happens, whether it’s a person or a plan, an activity, whatever it is, it always goes away. The feeling and whatever it was that was causing it. And as cliche as it sounds, I’m left with this gaping hole of sadness and despair. I know that life isn’t supposed to be like this. You aren’t supposed to spend your time waiting for the other shoe to drop. You should be happy and content in the fact that there is something in your life making you feel good. Not waiting around for that thing to end or be gone. But I do, I always find myself going back to the same people and the same things that just let me down again and again. For a while I was making myself happy, honestly and truly happy. I would wake up and feel great about myself and what I would accomplish that day. But it reaches a point where you have been let down so much that you just stop. You stop caring and stop doing things for yourself. You settle for the moments. And I am tired. I’m tired of being sad and settling for the moments, but how are you supposed to escape that mind set when you still just don’t care?

Settling for the moments is not how I plan to live my life, at all. I plan on being happy, so damn happy in fact, that people become jealous of me, because I’ll be the happy girl. But for now, I'll settle for the moments and the days. Because I would rather have them than have nothing at all. Some people don’t have the life I have, they would be jealous of my life, but more often than not, those people are 100 times happier than I am on a day to day basis. And that’s the saddest part. It’s not like I don’t do things that used to make me happy, I still hangout with my friends and go to work and do fun things. I live my life it just doesn’t make me happy the way it used to. And no one around me knows that. Because everyone around me has become so happy this past year and I just haven’t. The people around me, my friends, family and coworkers have such larger problems to deal with. Problems that they need my help dealing with that I don’t see it fitting to talk about my happiness. I don’t mind helping them because I love them, and helping them used to make me happy! But at this point, no one sees me as the girl who has problems. I have gotten so good at faking it that no one ever checks up on me or asks about me and my issues. And that’s fine because I wouldn’t admit it if they did, I just can’t seem to remember when I stopped putting myself and my happiness first.

This isn’t how I planned this post to end. I wanted to talk about happiness and how to achieve it. And then I realized throughout writing that I can’t write about that because I can’t fulfill that task myself. I am okay with settling for the moments, and I shouldn’t be, no one should. You should never settle, and I know that, yet that’s what I do every day. So during writing this post I have come to the conclusion that I will be putting myself and my happiness first. Because I deserve at least that much. I have a friend whose world was recently rocked by a tragic event and it took them a long time to find themselves again, and they realized that they deserved happiness. No matter what anyone said or thought or how it affected them, they deserved it. And if that person does, don’t I? Doesn’t everyone? I’m over putting my problems aside. I’m over helping others and putting them before me. I’m over settling for moments, I’m doing what makes me happy and what is right for me, regardless of anyone else. And that’s how I will live my life, for now anyways. I will find happiness and not care about if it will leave or dissipate. I will just be happy.