What am I doing here?!

From Thesaurus.com:

Word Origin & History

happiness 1520s, "good fortune," from happy + -ness.  
Meaning "pleasant and contented mental state" is from 1590s.


I was trying to find a word other than "happiness".  I suddenly realized that this common word carries a sense of apprehension for me... a sense of forced being.  "Happiness" reminds me of blogs and articles that try to inspire you to BE happy.  Like you can just turn on a switch somewhere in your head and then you are suddenly HAPPY.  Perhaps this stigma against the word stems from my sweet, well-meaning husband, who used to tell me now and then to "just be happy" if I wanted to feel better about things, and feel better about life.  Now that I think of it, it has been years since he has said that to me.  Thank goodness.  I take it as another sign that the dynamic of our marriage is changing-- slowly, but surely, as I try to regain my self-confidence and pick up the pieces of my personality.

Since Sunday, the word "happiness" has been burned into my mind.  It will be a long process for me to work through why this word won't leave my mind, but this phenomenon has inspired me to write for the first time in about 10 years... I think?  I haven't really written anything personal since my husband moved back home from college.  The love notes and letters I used to write to him while he was away were the last inspirations I ever had to write.  I couldn't even fathom writing our own wedding vows-- which incidentally, ended up okay, as we were married in a Catholic Church which didn't exactly let us change any of the jargon from what the Priest was reading.  (I am not sure if this was just the Church we chose, or all Catholic wedding rites; the only other wedding I've gone to at a Catholic Church was my Uncle's wedding in Pennsylvania, when I was only 4 or 5 years old.)

As such, when I typed out a title for this Blog, I saw the word HAPPINESS there and felt something tug at me inside my heart.  Such a stigma in my mind against the word for so many years, but why didn't I feel my usual apprehension at this word since Sunday morning?  Why did it come back to me just when I saw the word there on the screen?  I suppose the visual cue made its way into my head.  So, off to Thesaurus.com to try to find another word for "happiness" for this Blog.


happiness 1520s, "good fortune," from happy + -ness.
Meaning "pleasant and contented mental state" is from 1590s.


Okay, "good fortune" sounds okay to me, like maybe sometimes outside events can legitimately play a part in if we are HAPPY or not.  That's a winning thought to my brain.

"Pleasant and contented mental state".  OH MY GOD.  You mean to tell me that being HAPPY doesn't mean I have to be loud and fake and painfully obviously hyper?!  Maybe I have been working around too many melodramatic and hyper (to me) people, but lately I have been feeling like I have to totally go out of my comfort zone in order to not come off as sad or pensive, or like there is always something wrong at home.  Geez.  No wonder I have been afraid of HAPPY.  It is exhausting!

But "pleasant and contented"???  I feel like those could be adjectives that might describe me at... well, some times.  Pleasant at work, perhaps.  "Contented" is kind of hard to describe someone as, only using visual cues.  (Although as a side note, someone who is visually "contented" might be those people I see everyone once in a while who are always smiling, just a little bit.  ALWAYS.  Like they are sitting on the train staring into space, and smiling.  Or standing in the aisles at work, and just smiling into space.  Not smiling AT anyone or anything, but smiling because why?  What are they thinking about??  What are they thinking about ALL THE TIME that could possibly make them always have a small smile on their face??  Are their mouths just shaped that way, curled up at the ends?  Maybe I should make a post at some point about this peculiarity.  It is peculiar to me!  For some reason, constantly smiling people make me feel extremely uneasy. I'd rather have someone always with their mouth open a little bit-- I know you've seen those people too-- than have someone who smiles non-stop.  I assume someone riding the train for 45 minutes and slightly smiling the ENTIRE TIME is one of these people, but perhaps I am wrong; however, there IS a girl at work who I have seen always smiling, every single different day and time I have seen her.  And not like smiling just because she sees me or is saying hello.  I haven't actually really heard her say anything, or smile any more, or any less.  Hmmm... perhaps a constant smiler can only smile just that little bit, and doesn't ever have those big huge smiles that my brother says I do when I try to fake smile for pictures-- every childhood picture we have of me has me smiling like this.  I guess that's what happens when your parents don't take pictures of you very often!  Okay, I just found out that apparently "Smiler" also is a name for someone who is a super Miley Cyrus fan-- thank you, Urban Dictionary!  That's enough for now!)  

Anyway, back to "pleasant and contented".  That seems more like something I can achieve.  Something that I don't have to feel like I am manic in order to see in myself.  (I thought the Thesaurus read "from 1950s, instead of "1590s", and got excited for a moment.  Haha!   Visions of poodle skirts and greasy spoon diners came to my head, and the word seemed more... happy.... to me for a moment.)  "Pleasant" I can do, and I think I already usually succeed at that.  "Contented" can be something I can shoot for (and have always already wished for myself, really), and hopefully something I can maintain as a "mental state".  That seems more manageable in my mind than trying to maintain HAPPY (there's the scary word, again).  

Good fortune.  Pleasant.  Contented.  Mental state.  So, the word "happiness" can remain.

I suppose I began writing again because something needs to be worked out in my mind, and I feel inclined to work through it through words for the first time in many years-- basically ever since writing was mandatory in high school (and a tiny bit in college for me).

Since Sunday night, I just have fits of crying.  But not because I am sad, or frustrated, or feeling hopeless or lost.  The tears are coming from HAPPINESS!  All that I can think of to explain this is that my happiness has been pulled out.  Maybe my sadness is leaking out through wet tears??  All the years I have spent feeling inadequate and useless and pointless feel like a fog, even if just for fleeting moments.  I think about what happened on Sunday evening, and the tears start to well up again.  I told my friend at work about Sunday, and I teared up.  She smiled and laughed because she could tell how happy my experience made me, and she was very glad we were able to switch our schedules so that Sunday could have happened for me  (Incidentally, she is in Las Vegas right now, so the schedule swap very much worked out okay for her, too!)


What am I doing here?!  The quote keeps bouncing in my head, in Pinky's voice, of course, no less!  (And yes, I am referring to Pinky the lab mouse!)  The actual audio quote has his crazy cute laugh first, and actually the laugh is very appropriate to how I am feeling right now.  Sunday was just nuts.  What a dream come true!!!  Really, I think my middle-school self actually had a dream that foretold what would happen to me, about 20 years later.  I can't even think about it without smiling, sometimes even shaking my head in disbelief and delight, and then, yes.... crying.  I lay in bed Sunday night, crying so much from happiness that my eyes felt like they were going to pop out of my head.


My happiness was pulled out!!!!