Stop Trying to be Happy: Improving Your Emotional Health
I’m with my first boyfriend. I met him in film class, and he was exactly what you would expect to find in a class called “Truth in Film.” Hint: There is no truth. We say this, pat ourselves on the back, and all pretend to be Plato for thirty minutes about The Truman Show and color theory.
This boy was the most Plato of our little band. One night he and I were walking around, holding hands. He looked up, and staring at the sky in profile, he said: “You know the only thing I want in life? I mean, the only thing that actually matters?”
I’m a good sport, so I said: “What?”
He smiled fondly, like he was about to win my heart or break it. “I just want to be happy. That’s it. That’s all. That’s the point to all this.”
I responded in kind: “Huh.”
This was my freshman year in college, and by that point, I had three years of intensive therapy under my belt. And all I could think in my head was: what bullshit.
1. How I Gave Up on Being Happy and Learned to Love the Bomb
I didn’t think this in order to be an asshole, or at least, not a complete one. It was because I was born with a mood-swing disorder, and I had two choices in life: let go of “happy” or give up on everything else.
