Happiness. What a strange, fleeting bird. You chase it with hands still dirty from the past, grasping, wanting, and yet it slips through, laughing in a language you’ve long forgotten. But I tell you, there’s a way to catch it, even when your pockets are filled with stones from your childhood, even when the ghosts of those nights press against your skin.
You don’t wait for the grief to dissolve. No, grief is a stubborn lover. It sleeps in the bed beside you, holding your dreams captive, whispering the old stories of your bruises, your broken parts. But happiness, happiness is the thief in the night. It sneaks in between breaths, between the seams of all that sorrow. You must learn to let it.
I’ve learned that you don’t have to be whole to taste joy. You don’t have to bury the dead parts of yourself to smile. You just have to open a window inside your soul, even if the walls are crumbling. Even if the air is thick with all the things you never got to say. You say it now, anyway. You sing your grief, and in that song, there is a strange, defiant happiness.
Maybe happiness doesn’t come as a grand parade. Maybe it’s not some shining future waiting for you after you’ve bled out every last drop of sadness. Maybe it’s in the cup of coffee you sip while your heart is still raw. Maybe it’s in the way sunlight filters through the trees, even as your past lurks in the shade.
You hold both. You cradle the pain in one hand, and in the other, you catch the fragile wings of happiness. You let them exist together, because that’s all we have — this messy, tangled thing called life, where joy and sorrow dance in the same breath. And that’s enough.
It has to be.
B 🤍
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