Every year in school, we would pass around a paper with each student's name on it. The other students would write one thing on each paper that they liked about the person whose name was at the top. I was always so proud of mine. Every single year, the most prevalent comment was, "always happy." I loved it. I love being happy. I love sharing that happiness with the world. But I hated feeling anything else. When confronted with a feeling that wasn't happiness, I viewed it the way some people view physical illness. When I felt a twinge of a bad feeling, I shoved it away and smiled at the world. It's just how I operated, and it's how many other people operate as well. Humans don't like to feel sadness.

But I'll tell you a secret. One that has been buried inside of me since I learned to talk. Sometimes I get sad. And that's really okay. Everyone does. Avoiding your emotions makes it hard to express them later in life. It can feel like a disease, eating you from the inside out. Sadness turned me into a liar. A liar who would smile when everything was falling apart because I was afraid to feel anything else. A liar who was never honest with people who cared about me because I didn't want to admit that I wasn't happy. Everyone knew that I was always happy.

But what if we were okay with being sad? What if sadness has a purpose? We all know that everyone gets sad. The happiest person on earth still knows the pain of grief and melancholy. Yet we hide our sadness because it's inconvenient. I hid my sadness in part because I didn't think people would like me if I were open and honest. If I wasn't the girl who was always happy.

But here's the thing that we struggle to realize: you will be loved even on your darkest days. Those who care about you will not stop because you are a little less than content. In fact, your relationships will probably improve because for the first time the people in your life will be able to shed their smiles and say, "you know what? Sometimes I'm sad too. We'll work through it together."

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. Being sad does not mean that you're an unhappy person. It means that you are a human being, capable of experiencing the depths of despair and the peaks of joy. The deeper your sadness is, the more joy you can contain. Pushing your grief, your sadness, your despair to the deepest corners of your mind limits the joy you can receive. You are not one singular trait. One cannot exist without the other. None of us are happiness. None of us are sadness. We are both and so much more.

My name is Alex. I am 20 years old. I am a sister, a daughter, a friend, a caretaker. I am kind, I am strong, I am passionate. I am happy. But sometimes I get sad. And I'm learning that that's really okay.