Happy Girl

 Recently, multiple coworkers have commented on my peppy attitude, and how I'm always so upbeat. This is easily one of my favorite compliments to receive (not that I'm not thrilled to get literally any kind of compliment). 

I spent so much of my life being unhappy. I faked smiles and hid tears. I'd play the role of social butterfly and little miss sunshine all day long, then spend my nights sobbing in the dark, begging God for help, and trying to hold onto my will to live. 

From the time I was 15 or so, until my mid-20s, suicide was an almost daily thought. It was like a highway billboard that I would pass over and over while I tried to ignore it. I tried to take my life at 17, and I struggled with suicide for years after that. Even with therapists, and medications, and great friends. Even with a support system. Even as things in my life went really, really well. 

I remember one night, my sophomore year of college, when I walked out to my car in the middle of winter and just sat in for hours in the middle of the night because I truly did not think I could sit in my dorm room, next to bottles of pills, and not swallow them all. I don't even know if they would have killed them, but I was so depressed that I was ready to try anything. 

Back then I hated the idea that I would need pills for the rest of my life to be happy. I wanted to just be able to be happy on my own. I didn't fully understand yet that my depression wasn't just in my head. I hadn't learned enough to know that it was a chemical imbalance in my body, and not just a weakness. 

I wanted nothing more then than to be able to be happy and smile and not be lying. I didn't want to go through my days afraid of the night, and all the things that crawled out of my head when there weren't people around to put up a front for. 

So when people look at me today, and they're in awe of how I can always be so peppy, or why I come in everyday with a smile, I tell hem. I say that I spent too many years of my life unhappy, and now I want to relish in every single moment of glee. I want to bask in the joy of not hiding dread. 

Being able to simply be happy, is my everyday miracle, and even if I'm not the walking example of perky every day, I will relish every day that I get to be happy.