Happiness

I went on a cruise in this last little bit (see pretty pictures on the home page) and many people asked me about my tattoos. Most of the questions were really “Where are you from? oh I’m from wherever” type of thing. I did take pictures for some Italian guys they said “Ciao” and I did not say it back. I should have though it was really cool.

But my tattoos, I have a few scattered across my arms and stuff but nothing too crazy or anything like that. The one on my left arm, I drew myself and it’s my biggest piece. Each “symbol” is a letter, they go down my arm like I, H and S. I make this joke that I’m going to get a T on my shoulder to spell “shit” when I’m 80 years old so I can die with shit on my arm. The T would stand for “terrific” cause what else would it stand for. But for the other letters, I stands for independence, H stands for happiness, and S stands for strength. That’s what I normally tell people when they ask. The part that I don’t say is that you need to have the strength that I do in order to be this happy and independent. I don’t say that part because I’d be giving away too much of myself. All of that aside what I actually intend to talk about is: Happiness.

Happiness has played such an important part of who I am. I told my mom a while ago that I tended to run from sadness because I was afraid of hitting another episode of depression, but running from sadness doesn’t really work. I don’t know if anyone else has done that, but for me in one way or another it always comes back. So I don’t suggest that you run from it even if it feels better. Something that I’ve been trying to do is just let myself cry, let myself feel sad when it hits, allow myself to hurt about whatever it is and then let it go. However that might be, find a way to let it go. (I might talk about that concept in a different post cause I do have a lot to say on that as well). Look, the point is that I try to be happy in whatever way that looks like. So if posting to a blog that only I read makes me happy then damn right I’m doing it. And I think that’s part of it just finding things that brings joy to you. Being happy isn’t easy but I think it is achievable. When I think about myself and what does and doesn’t bring me happiness a lot of the times when its things that I can control I chose to be selfish.

Innately I think woman don’t think that they’re allowed to be selfish because we’re seen as provides and care takers and many other reasons but as a young woman like myself there are a lot of times I get to be selfish. Whether that looks like going out when my mom would prefer that I stay home or I break up with a partner because I’m not happy. Either way in some way I’m being selfish. Long story short, if you can see a way that you can become even 5% more happier and it only requires you to be a bit selfish than do it. Obviously when you have responsibilities like children it’s a different story but if the only thing holding you back from making you happy is your fear of selfishness then let it go. It’s okay to do what makes you happy.

I think that we live such short lives and it’s not fair that people around us expect us to live and make choices thats best for them. We don’t live long enough for other people to make us miserable. When I look back on my life at 80 years old I want to look back and see that I lived every moment I could happy, I want to look back and I think I had a good life. I was happy, I may have not been everyone’s friend, I may have been known as selfish but at least when I go, I’ll go at peace and content with myself.

Lots of love, June