HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Ever look for happiness?
Happiness is that easy lay. It’s the drunk girl at the bar that can’t wait to go home with you. It’s like 100 orgasms if you let a bunch in at once. But if you’re a little frigid, let it seep in a little bit at a time. Whatever you like happiness has got you covered. Damn, it’s the best.

But we make it sooooo hard. Like we just don’t want happiness. Are we that dumb or just some sick f*cks that get off on refusing something that feels so good? We treat it like a new kind of disease. “Nah, you keep that happiness shit over there. I’m good.”
Oooh, but don’t let someone else have it cuz then we get JEALOUS! Like, “What are you doing with happiness?” And they look so damn, for lack of a better word, happy, that it makes us sick because we know that we let it walk right on by.
But worse is the fact that we don’t realize that there’s enough happiness for everyone, so we don’t even bother trying to get some of our own. We sit in the corner jaded and bitter and screwfaced, rejecting happiness even though someone is trying to give us some. Because that’s one thing about happy people, they are not stingy. My God, they’re like Jehovah Witnesses trying to share it with the world! But still, we say, “I tried it before and it hurt me. I just don’t trust it anymore.”
Then there are those who are just plain afraid of happiness. They hear things like, “If I die tomorrow at least I was happy,” or “I’m so happy I could die,” and it seems so contradictory. Happy and death in the same sentence? Weird. Some people won’t go to Venice because of the saying, “See Venice and die.” And don’t forget the folks who think that happy people are square, as if it will turn them into Forrest Gump.
But one day, if you’re lucky, when your back is turned and you’re least expecting it, that happiness sneaks up on you like a b*tch that don’t listen. That one that you told a thousand times to leave you alone but she keeps coming back.
It happened to me.
Unexpectedly, it showed up at my house with a friend and, well, it hadn’t been around for so long that I barely recognized it. But damn it looked good. That smile. That glow. Shit, everyone else around me was so heavy they could barely get out of bed, but this girl was floating on air. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and asked her, “What’s got you so happy?” She laughed (which could have pissed me off, but I was too intrigued to care) and said, “life.” Oh, not that lame cliché! I could get that on facebook!
But my curiosity wouldn’t let me leave it alone so I asked her to expound. She went on to say something about the fact that she was fully self-expressed and it was making her high. Then she spoke about her plans for the future.
Man.
There was nothing in my future but the same old dark cloud that threatened to choke me to death every single day.
To say that I was ready to pounce on happiness would be an understatement, but I played it cool because, well, I really wanted my own. Though I didn’t have a lot of recent experience with happiness I knew that I couldn’t just take hers. So I did something completely out of character. I asked her for help.
Yea.
I was really putting myself out there because I wouldn’t let just anyone mess with my happiness, but since I didn’t have any in the first place, it was a good starting point. Turns out, she wasn’t just your average happy person, she had been quietly teaching people how to be happy for the past few years. It was her job as a life coach. Normally, I wouldn’t go anywhere near those people because it seemed so desperate (like, who needs to be coached on living life? get a shrink and call it a day), not to mention the “coaches” seemed like vultures preying on the weak and vulnerable. Truly, what qualified them for such a position? I could go on all day, but when it came down to it, I wanted happiness back at any cost. Even if it meant going through a middleman.

So I committed to working with her with the hope that she could help bring happiness back into my life.
After six months, it showed up. It wasn’t a surprise because I’d been courting it: writing it letters, talking to it, reminiscing about the days when me and happiness were thick as thieves, visualizing what I would do with it once I got my hands on it again. Who wouldn’t want to be wanted like that? I was laying a bed, creating a foundation, building a castle for happiness that it could not resist. First it showed up as the pool in our complex that I initially refused to swim in because I thought it was dingy. Now it looked so good that I jumped in full body and didn’t care that I hadn’t lost the weight from giving birth a few months back. It was in the changing color of the leaves that fell from the trees. Ever see a leaf with the perfect mix of green and yellow and brown? Man, the colors are so rich and vibrant! If only it could be harnessed into the perfect handbag. It was in my husband’s decision to start helping with the dishes- something I’d been trying to achieve since we met. And oh, how happy it makes me to sit down and write. Putting my thoughts on paper, knowing that I’m saying exactly what I want to say and having so much fun with it, that’s beyond heaven! And on a day when I’m not particularly feeling it I look for it. The sun is shining, yes! My daughter just went for her nap without all the tears and drama, life is good! The best part is the more I look the more I see! I can’t escape happiness!
Wow…I can’t wait to go to Venice!

And if I die tomorrow I can honestly say that at least I was happy.

By Erickka Sy Savané