Happiness is...

Where I live spring has already come upon us. The sun shines everyday and warms the earth. There is a cool breeze that whispers in your ear of beautiful fairytales. Spring is here for me, in the middle of January. I want to pack a lunch in a basket and wear a light pretty sundress and go on a picnic with my love. I want to plant flowers, and I want to pick flowers. I want to make crown after crown of daisies. The sun is shining and beckoning, “come out and play!” it says. I look out my window and dream, but I don’t do any of these things that I want to do. Why am I compelled to stay inside and watch the world go by? Why do I hide away and dream instead? Wouldn’t I be happier if I did the things I dream of? Yet I continue to dream and hide, and watch the world as it passes by my window. I tell myself that I can’t do those things simply because I don’t believe. I don’t believe in happiness, or that it can be mine in the way that I dream. I believe that the sun is a mask for a dark foreboding sky. I don’t trust the joy that it offers and I tell myself that it is all a lie. Why?


I have analyzed myself over and over again. I blame my dad, for whom I was never good enough. I blame him because he told me lies over and over again. He abandoned me, and his family and I can never trust him again. I blame him for this disbelief. I don’t think that this is all though. I’m sure it is part of my problem (yes, I have daddy issues), but it can’t be all. I also blame the bastard who stole my innocence on that fateful autumn day. I lived dreams and fairytales before, and afterwards reality came crashing down. I will never forgive that stranger and I will never forgive my dad for taking my faith away. I find myself to be a contradiction. I carry around a childlike innocence, I choose to dwell and dream of fairytales. Yet I know reality. I know that these don’t exist and I feed the hope that they do. I have a bright side, and a dark side, always fighting each other.

I say that I live inside always looking out, and I say this literally and figuratively. As I write this I know I have built a wall inside and it keeps out everything that can possible hurt me. It protects me as it kills me, slowly. There are many layers to this wall, and a single window in which I can look out at the world and wish for what I see while knowing, believing, that if I take a step outside it will all suddenly change and the world I wish for will tear me apart. So I continue to stay safely inside and I wait, I wait for the world to prove me right. I also wait for someone to prove me wrong.

Reminiscing memories

Illusions of my mind

Cinderella's story

I search too far to find

Hints of music left unseen

This magic toy I wind

Echoes of a picture past

These disillusions I unbind*

*written by Sarah Odle, used with permission.