Happiness In The Pursuit

 

I think about all of the time I have spent not feeling as if happiness would ever come my way.  All the times I spent feeling as if I did not deserve happiness, but never really figuring out why I felt that way.  I remember at a very early age in life I thought happiness always meant something bad was about to happen.  It was as if something bad was the punishment for enjoying anything good.  When I say at a young age I am talking about the single digit age numbers.  I may not have been able to pinpoint the feeling at that age but I remember knowing the difference between happy and sad and feeling happy at things in life then waiting for something sad to follow. 

I've not ever shielded my blog following friends from the abuse that was inflicted upon me by my birth dad in the form of mental, physical and sexual abuse that started around the age of seven.  At that age you accept it for what it is in your life because you really do not know it is wrong, especially when it is hidden deep in the walls of the house you live in.  Years later I realized it was around the time of my little sisters death that we no longer went to family gatherings, we no longer had visitors at our house and we no longer enjoyed the freedom of the outdoors when our birth dad was around.  It was around this time that the abuse started for me, even though years later I would find out it had been going on for years for my older brothers. 

I remember all the happy times I had with my mom during the day hours while my birth dad was at work.  When it was close to the time he would come home from work the happy times would be tucked away for another day and the evenings brought on the abuse.  I never realized the abuse my mom also suffered at the hands of her husband, at least not until I hit my early double digit numbers in age.  I knew it was getting worse for me, but I never thought about what my mom was going through.  Homeschool teacher by day, slave wife by  night.  That is what I would describe her life as back then, knowing now what I did not know then.

So the fun I had during the day, the learning, the reading, the crafts, the walks up town to the library, would always be followed by the yelling, the beatings, the sexual abuse at night.  Happiness followed by sorrow, it was the way life worked right?  Enjoy a bit of fun, pay for it later.  Find happiness in your day and expect to be punished for it by night.  So many people wonder why women, or children for that matter, stay in the home where the abuse is occurring.  If you have never been the victim or an abuser you may find it hard to understand that you do not think about it being a choice.  You think of it as being routine, the way it is for everyone, you know no different because you have come to accept the punishment of sadness for the reward of happiness.

And then you grow older, not really wiser yet, but your thinking changes and start to wonder where the happiness without the punishment comes from.  For me I decided to reach out to my older brother Joey.  If you are a blog following friend of mine you remember Joey is my brother who died at the age of 24 from complications of Stage 4 lung cancer.  The year before he was diagnosed I was thirteen and I reached out to Joey for help, telling him of the abuse I was suffering from our birth dad.  He promised to help me, to make things better for me and I was so happy that Joey loved me enough to come around home more often then he had ever done since he moved out.  It didn't stop the abuse but on the nights Joey stayed and never left my side our birth dad stayed out of my room.  It made me happy, I felt Joey was going to be able to protect me from all the abuse in a short manner of time.  Then he got sick and he only grew weaker.   My happiness was being punished.  I was so happy Joey was there for me and my punishment was him becoming terminally ill.  I accepted this, once again, feeling that I brought on the bad by enjoying the good.  When would I learn? 

There would be no happiness for me without sadness.  It was as common as slapping jelly on a peanut butter sandwich, it's just the way it was.  Happiness and sadness were meant to be together, like rain falling from a dark cloud, it just is.  I can think clear back to when I was six and Jocelyn was four and we were happy to be riding our bikes out in the sunshine at a family gathering, laughing and enjoying our day.  Then she darted across a driveway sidewalk where she was backed over by car and killed, proving from the single digit of age six that if you want to be happy, you have to be sad.  Would it not just be easier to not enjoy any good feelings and go with the bad ones if the end result was going to be the same?  Why not seek out the bad and just let it flow if that was going to be the outcome anyway.

At the age of fourteen I would enjoy a bit of sadness with a gob of happiness when my next oldest brother helped me flee our Bushnell home in Sioux City IA and take me to Boston MA where I would continue to be punished for being happy.  Happy to leave the abuse, sad I had to leave my mom to do so, that made me sad.  This was the point in my life where I realized I should be on a pursuit of happiness.  Go out in this world a boy full of doubt and find the happiness I felt I earned.  I would spend the next eight years in the pursuit of happiness before I discovered all I really needed was to enjoy the happiness in my pursuit. 

I know now that in my journey towards eternal life there will be many sad times.  I will lose family, friends, and even friends families to death.  I will experience failures that will eventually make me a better me.  I will make mistakes that will make me feel as if I was enjoying to much happiness along my journey's way.  Because that is just life, and without the sad times I would not appreciate the happiness I stumble upon.  I know now that it is OK to be happy, to expect happiness, to accept happiness, to live for happiness.  I also have come to realize that there is no journey in the Pursuit Of Happiness, but there is Happiness In The Pursuit of everlasting life.  That I should enjoy every moment of happiness I come across in my journey on earth.  That its not about deserving happiness in your life, its about enjoying that happiness.  It took me a little over 22 years of life to realize I am allowed to be happy with some sad moments and I shouldn't wait around for the bad times to follow the good fortunes.

The Pursuit of Happiness does not exist in our journey on earth no matter what we feel we are on a journey of.  The Happiness of the Pursuit is alive and real and we should embrace every moment of happiness that comes our way.  Accept the challenges of the sad moments and use them to measure the amount of happiness we actually do have in our lives.  Since I have discovered the concept of deserving happiness and I have stopped waiting for tragedy to strike me down for enjoying it, I am the happiest I have ever been.  I would like you to be the happiest you can be as well.  Start today, count your blessings and as you do, know that you deserve them as well as any happiness that may come your way.

I make the choices in my life and only I can enjoy those with all my heart.  The changes I have made in my life this past six months have been tough.  The paths I have chosen to follow have not all been smooth.  There have been a lot of hesitant feelings where at times I wondered did I make the right choice.  I breath and I tell myself that even a wrong choice is still a direction.  A decision to learn from, a decision to grow with, something that will confirm not only my faith in God but my faith in myself.  Leaping forward with happiness has been a lot more productive than leaping forward with fear.  I no know longer regret the chances I have taken even if the outcome was not what I desired it to be.