Happiness did not feel like I thought it would. It did not find me in a tearful exchange with my mother, or in a sunrise painted with colors so vibrant and exquisite that they seemed to be dancing across the horizon. There was no moment that transcended time and space in which I finally felt that all of my troubles had faded away into the background. Happiness was not an event. It was not a moment. It was a taxing and heartbreaking and pitiful process, but ultimately, it was magnificent, not in the sense of a Hollywood-worthy scene complete with the perfect soundtrack, but in the sense that for the first time in almost three years, I felt as if my life was getting better. In the end, happiness was not a moment or an experience or even an emotion. Happiness was hope.

I remember when I was love sick. You block out everyone. You feel so tired, because you haven’t slept in forever. You know he’ll be in your dreams but you don’t want to stay awake laying in your bed crying either. You’re starving, but you can’t eat because you’re starving for him and every memory just leaves you with a bigger hole in your heart. Even your clothes reminds you of him, what you wore when you hung out. You can still smell them all over him, even though his scent hasn’t been there for long. You wish his scent would be stuck on you, but you know you’d be pulling at your skin trying to get him off you. You’re online, he signs on, and you want to scream at him to go away, but you just watch the screen waiting for him to say anything, but then he signs off, and you tear yourself apart for not saying anything to him. You stop talking to your friends, and they get worried and try comforting you, but they just make you feel worse because they think they know, but they don’t have a damn clue.