Uncensored

Part 13

There came a time when I started to feel guilty for being happy.
There had been happiness and misery, contemplation, depression, and the abyss of my eating disorder. But then there were moments when I felt happy, and instead of enjoying that feeling I felt guilty for it.
My guilt became exacerbated by her unhappiness. The more unhappy she was, the more guilty I felt. There was a direct, positive correlation. And of course she was unhappy. She struggled just as I did, and then some. We were both haunted by demons, but they were different kinds with different agendas, and there was a moment that I realized I was becoming her life raft (again), and I had to catch my breath.

I was already my husband's life raft. And I didn't know if I could carry another person's happiness without sinking. Her happiness weighed heavy on me, while her unhappiness chipped away on my own life's content.

Every time we talked about our struggles apart, her pain permeated the atmosphere, so strong it was actually crossing the Atlantic. I was struggling, too, but my struggles were mostly with myself, and not about us. I was clear about our relationship from the beginning, clear what it meant that I was married, the distance, the waiting and struggles ahead. She seemed to struggle more with new realizations as they hit her head on, one by one, such as my wish to have children.

I didn't miss her every minute of every day. She was right to say this wasn't fair, I was the one being married, my "safety-net" what she called him. Fair or not, it was the truth. I missed her mostly, varying in intensity from physically unbearable to an unconscious undercurrent, but not always. At the same time, my happiness seemed to be toxic to her happiness, because it occurred independently of her, far away, something she neither caused nor witnessed. Yes, she made me happy. But other things did, too.

What is the goal in life?
Happiness. Even when people think they want other things, money or success, they think it's because it will make them happy. Happiness is the ultimate goal. All I ever wanted was to be happy. So I work on being happy most days. There are some very dark days that I cannot get myself to look in the mirror, the days that breathing becomes hard, and every thought exhausting. But most days, I try to be happy and I try to find that happiness everywhere I can- whether it's enjoying the peace and quiet of my home, enjoying a cup of coffee, enjoying the sunshine, getting a package from my mother, snuggling with the cat, or hanging out with my hubby. Happiness, for me, is an active effort, a goal to reach every day, but also a task. Sometimes happiness finds us, in unexpected or small ways, and we're amazed by it. But other times we have to make our own happiness, have to make ourselves happy, even if that means changing our outlook on our lives or the world. Even if that means being the bigger person.

I kept my happiness from her. From the beginning really. It's nice to think we could tell each other anything, but theory and practice are two different things and anything does not mean everything. I censored what I shared with her from the beginning. Over time, I only became more cautious, being burnt by the aftermath of sharing too much information. She told me we could talk about anything but what happened in my bedroom. But really, I wouldn't want to hear about my own marriage either if I was her. Though she told me I could share information about my life, I mostly chose not to, knowing too well that my husband was her most painful button to push. The thing was, my husband was my life and without him, there wasn't really much left. Not because I'm not more than my husband, and most of my happiness was indeed self-made, but because he was part of every aspect of my life. It became exhausting to weigh my words to avoid hurting her. But that's what you do in love, that's what you do for the other person, that's love, the sacrifice, the compromise. Except that my happiness was directly contributing to her unhappiness. We didn't seem to be able to leave this dark area anymore, in which she suffocated one way or the other- sometimes it was about me and sometimes it was not, but either way I always felt that I had to try to make it better.

I'm not a person that reacts well to negativity, I have a reasonable threshold of negativity I can endure, if not for the fact alone that my husband is a pessimist. But I don't just endure negativity, I absorb it. It seeps into me and leaves a bitter taste. Thus, too much negativity over a long period of time becomes something I tend to struggle with. That is also the reason why I'm great at apologizing (to avid disharmony), great at starting –over (for positive change and out of a negative phase), and good at moving on. That's why I believe that happiness is an inside job, something we largely control ourselves.

Somehow my happiness, the one I worked so hard for, didn't seem to match missing each other though, and so we constantly found ourselves in mismatching moods. But for me, missing her and happiness weren't mutually exclusive- they couldn't be or else we would be unhappy for the next 15 years.

Looking at the ocean has always made me feel peaceful, taking in the whole picture of it all, of our lives, and breathing in the vastness of it all- the vastness of choices, of options, of paths, of encounters, of joy and pain. I enjoy feeling small in front of the vastness of the ocean- it humbles me. It humbles me to know that all the small worries, small anxiety, all the small crap that dirties up of daily lives isn't what is really important.
I felt so happy standing in front of the ocean, when I started thinking of her and knowing, well almost physically feeling her longing for me. While she was missing me in pain, I was standing in front of the ocean feeling content. Of course I would have been happy to have her at my side, but I was also perfectly happy just standing there with myself, and then the guilt hit me again.

I could miss her and be happy.
But could she?
And could I stop feeling guilty for it?