It started back on Sunday night.
After I got out of work, I changed into a T-shirt and shorts and was playing with Hailey in her room with Lisa.
Last Christmas, I bought Hailey a toy punching bag. It's supposed to be the type that you fill up with water or sand at the bottom, and fill up with air at the top so when you hit it, it falls down and comes back up.
I used to have it filled with water, but it leaked, so now it's filled with nothing but air. As a result, when Hailey punches it, it goes all over the place, so she feels like The Incredible Hulk when she hits it.
Hailey was hitting it in her bedroom while Lisa and me watched. Because of the low weight that comes with a bag having no water or sand in it, she picked it up Hulk style and threw it at Lisa.
I'm sure that Hailey intended for my wife to catch it, but my wife was not ready for our kid to go all Hulk on the bag and toss it at her face. She did anyway.
After Hailey tossed the bag at her mom, we all watched as the bottom end of the toy punching bag hit my wife square in the face.
When it connected to Lisa's nose, I covered my face in shock. After that, something amazing happened.
My wife revealed that she wasn't injured. She was just in a sort of pain from being hit from a piece of plastic. After that, I began a kind of slow laugh. I kind of chuckled at first; then, I burst into full blown laughter.
Hailey saw me laughing my ass off, and she began laughing, too. That made me laugh even harder! Before you knew it, we were both in hysterics. With the exception of my wife (sorry babe, I love you!), who had left the room, my kid and I were insane with laughter!
I think it was at that point that some part in my brain either blew a fuse, or completely lit another one up. I'm not sure which.
The next day I was at work, just doing nothing, and I felt a weird sensation. I asked myself, "What the hell is going on?"
It was then that I realized:
Holy shit, I'm happy.
I haven't "felt happy" in years. I put that part in quotes to make the point that there aren't times in the past many years where I didn't feel happy. There were times when I heard a funny joke, or found that my kids were able to do something that made me proud, or some other point where there was some moment where I felt joy. I was happy in those brief, fleeting moments.
What I mean by "feeling happy", is that my "default setting", the time in our lives where we don't have any outside stimulation to direct our emotions, is for the first time in years, happy. It's not anger, fear, or any other negative emotion that has guided me for well over a decade. I'm just fucking happy.
When you've suffered from PTSD, depression, and anxiety for over a decade, this is a very weird feeling. I even tried to talk myself out of being happy, as crazy as that sounds.
A long time ago I heard a quote from Henry Rollins where he explained anger as being a form of awareness. He said that if you're angry, it's because you know that things are wrong, that you know that you live in a fucked up world and are aware of your situation. If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention.
That's why I started to try to talk myself out of being happy at first. I told myself, "You live in a world where you have to work longer hours to be able to pay the bills, there are cops in America that are getting away with murder while there are assholes murdering good cops. We live in a world where systemic racism exists, where there's some rich prick reality T.V. show star just a few votes away from the presidency who has ran a campaign on nothing but hate and evil, while you're still struggling to pay the bills every month. WHY IN THE FUCK ARE YOU SO HAPPY?!"
Every time I asked myself that question, a quote from a song by Spose (song shown below) kept screaming into my head:
Why am I so happy, I don't have to answer that. Why are you so miserable is the question that I need to ask.As the days passed and I kept that quote screaming in my brain, I came to a strong realization. I don't know if this general feeling of happiness is going to last. I hope that it does, but I've spent so many years being unhappy that I honestly don't know. What I do know is that for those of us that are unhappy for good reason (especially for the reasons listed above), we need to know that being happy is an act of fucking rebellion.
Yes, the world is a goddamn shit pile. We work harder than we should to be able to pay the bills. We see the systemic racism in our country and we have a strong enough sense of empathy to hate it. We are merely a few votes away from having a complete and total idiot running this country, and even if he loses, we'll still probably end up struggling to make a living.
Despite all that, we need to remember that we are human beings, goddamn it! Our lives have value, and we deserve to be happy! It's because of that, that being happy is an act of rebellion. The world wants us to be depressed, pissed off, and filled with despair because of all of the evil that exists in it.
It's because of that, that despite all the bullshit that's going on in the world, I choose to lift two big middle fingers up at it and scream:
FUCK YOU WORLD! I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY! YEAH, I'LL BE PISSED AT THE INJUSTICE OF THIS WORLD, BUT ONLY FOR A WHILE! IN BETWEEN THOSE MOMENTS, I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY JUST TO PISS YOU OFF! FUCK YOU, WORLD! I'M GOING TO BE HAPPY! IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, YOU CAN SUCK ON MY SALTY BALLS!
Suck my balls, world. I'm going to be happy just to piss you off.
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