In 30 years I think I've failed at being happy more than I have at anything else (though I think I've had more failures than successes). I think my depression set in sometime in the 5th grade. Hormones are terrible things after all. I've always been a very introverted person, and at that point the stress of being around people every day, whether I liked it or not, started to get to me. School was a nightmare. When I became an adult work was even worse.
When you're depressed its hard to see a way out of it. My entire adult life has been spent in food service, even though half of the job disgusts me (working with meat) and the other half hurts my back and bores the hell out of me. (I'm educated with a degree in English Literature, but my mental status and lack of experience in any field other than food makes it hard to get a better job that wont make me just as miserable.) Interacting with customers is even worse than touching meat. I can't feign happy. When I'm stressed or tired, its in my face and my voice. My impatience and annoyance with a difficult customer cannot be hidden. I've gotten into a lot of trouble over the years because of this. The only reason I have a job at the place I'm at right now is because the boss is spineless and won't fire anyone.
Needless to say, the stress of being stressed at doing my job badly made me do my job even worse. Crying fits at work were not uncommon for me. (On more than one occasion I was crying as I was making the food right in front of the customers.) It all just got to be too much. The noise and the stupidity and the frustration, paired with an aching back and tired feet, and the fact that I was bored out of my mind just left me drained, miserable and unable to function.
At one point during my adulthood I was successful enough to buy a house. I was not prepared to take care of the house (which wasn't in great condition). My depression also lead to a bad habit of cat collecting. I lost everything after getting laid off, one of my best friends went away to grad school and the other ran off to Florida for a girl. My boyfriend dumped me. Feeling like a failure, I got worse. While I was unemployed (for two years) anxiety grew on top of the depression. I can't drive a car. I have a hard time walking into stores I'm not familiar with. I can't even answer the phone or the door if I don't know exactly who's on the other side. Nightmares over losing my cats (they were taken to a very nice no-kill shelter who re-homed them all almost immediately) and nightmares about work plagued me for two years, every night, non-stop.
I was slowly going crazy. Even the good things--getting engaged, settling into a comfortable middle-class home, and beginning to develop my writing career--were not preventing the crazy from completely taking over my mind. I should have been happy, but there was no way to do it. I was constantly tired, constantly crying, sleeping ten hours a day and staring at the TV the rest of the time.
Five months ago my boss scheduled me to work for 8 days in a row (they were in two different pay periods so he could get away with it). Three of those days were 11 hour shifts. In the middle of the second double shift the crazy finally got the better of me. I went on a rampage in front of the health department, giving them a list of every dirty and unsafe practice that went on unchecked in our store. At the end of the rant I informed the inspector that I was quitting. I put my two weeks notice on my boss's desk and went and cried in the bathroom for an hour.
Three days later I came to my senses and agreed to stay on two days a week, which would at least cover my rent. I decided to take a few months and concentrate on my writing. For the first few months I was still pretty stressed. My brain had been running on over-drive for so long it was hard to feel any different. But my writing began to pick up, and I went on a trip to NYC completely alone without a single major incident of crazy, not even when I got lost.
I think I got happy in November. I was writing a lot for Nanowrimo. At that point I had decided I was capable of paying my bills on what I was making between working 10 hours a week and my royalties. Now it's January and I know I'm happy. Between the socializing I get at work, my fiance, and visiting my family once a month I get just enough human interaction to feel normal without feeling stressed. I've started exercising and lifting weights. As soon as the weather gets nicer and I can take my bike out I'm going to start volunteering at a cat shelter.
What I've learned is that being happy means finding your limits and accepting the changes you have to make to live within those limits. Forcing yourself to be someone you're not is never going to make you happy. It might buy a nice car, but I can't drive anyway, so what do I care? I don't have any extra money right now. I'm not making enough with my writing to have any extra after paying my bills. I'm lucky that I have a fiance who will help me if I need it, but I don't want his help unless it's absolutely necessary. In the spring I might try to get a job at a garden center down the road. I like green growing things. Maybe if I'm doing something I like the people wont be as stressful to me. I know I can't handle full-time work, and that's okay. I've accepted that I will just always be poor. I'd rather be poor and happy than have extra cash I'm too depressed to do anything with. I'd rather be poor than take a bunch of drugs just so I can handle a 40 hour week.
I wish it hadn't taken me so long to find the right lifestyle for myself. It's not perfect, but it's getting closer. More money would be nice, if only because eventually I'm going to have to buy new underwear or see a dentist, but I'm not going to stress about it right now. Right now I'm pretty damn content.
Weird.
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