A Letter to My Emotions

Dear Happiness,

You are easier said than done. My brain seems to think that you don’t exist in me anymore, but I feel you at least once or twice everyday, more so if I’m lucky. I feel you in a song, a gaze from a loved one, the whispers in the trees, or a long car ride full of different sounds and people. The best time that I feel you is in my chest. Bursting through me like the morning sun, breaking down my walls and carrying every piece of me to the promise that life will be good from here on out. Though both of us know that our journey together can end at any second, day or night, we carry on. Bringing joy to those who we love so dearly. Smiles and laughs, dancing through our faces as we glide along the streets with our friends feeling the chains of sorrow slip away. It’s so simple. It’s so easy to forget what I felt yesterday when I have you. You’re here with me now as I write this. Eagerly trying to remember everything you make me feel so that I don’t forget. You’re so special. You bring souls together, creating love and joy. Happiness, you’re in everything. But sadness, you are too.

You are the foundation of my childhood. You are there in my parents drunken-filled past, you are there within the lingering screams and pain that is hidden within my walls, and carried from one home to the next. Empty bottles scattered the floor, blood drenched bedrooms, and black painted minds. You are the essence of my families gruesome reality, running through our veins and flooding our memories that take charge of the youngest minds and collapses their ever growing dreams. Drug-filled veins creating holes in our brains. You steal, you cheat, you kill, without ever giving a second to think about what you may be doing to those you harm so aggressively. It is you that I fear, it is you that I loath. You are the constant reminder of anything in my life that was ever glowing with love and hope that has turned into dust. You are the weakest part of me, the deepest and darkest thoughts and aspirations inside of me. I shove people out of my life as you force your way into mine. I wreck and ruin relationships with those that I need to survive. A young mind thrown through hoops never knowing what to do. I have lost myself within you, with a part of me locked away in the past right there next to you.

Sadness, you are always there to catch me, but once you have your claws dug into me, you consume me. Feed at me, destroy me, make me hold your hand in the darkness and laugh at me. Put me in my place and showcase me. You, the evil being of my darkest nightmares, why would I ever let you have control of me? Trauma and pain are not a choice, and oh how selfish this may be to say, but I wish that it could be. How easy it would be to lock you out of my mind and swallow the key.

Happiness, you are in everything. Although my mental capacity is slowly sinking, I plead for a never-ending daydream turned into a blissful reality. I am running out of room for these past memories. I am running out of patience to keep letting you take advantage of me. Sadness, I plead for you to not be within everything. Let happiness constantly shine through me, live within me, consume me, breathe me. But, in light of your beauty, rain will never stop falling down on me. Happiness, you are in everything. The beauty I happen to find within everything is you. You are the wonderful world that I have come to know, and hopefully one day, I can be content and understanding of sharing the world with all of my emotions flooding inside of me. Content, sparkling. Even with you, sadness.

Sadness, one day I will learn to live with you peacefully. I will cope with you healthfully, and you will just be a sad song blaring through the end credits of a movie screen, a distant memory, a two AM cry that ends with a restful night's sleep. I will hold hands with my every emotion and cope happily. I see this for me. I see what the future could bring to the table for me and I hold onto this legacy. You have built me and torn me down more than anything in this world, and this crumbling foundation of my soul is still here breathing. I try to think of this as a blessing, and continue to run through the fields of evergreen wonder. Come and find me in my personal lake of emotions, and run away with me. Happiness, you are inside of me, and that will always mean everything to me.