It’s OK To Not Be Happy

I have been battling with the ‘be happy’ mentality for quite some time. What I mean by this is that when you’re unhappy and going through shit that somehow you need to convince yourself to just be happy and everything will be OK. But that’s just not real life.

Struggling with a purpose in life often times leads people to question who they are. I am definitely in the full fledge middle of feeling this way. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing anymore. I used to know or at least I thought I did. Then I got broken up with, got a job that wasn’t fulfilling, gained a bit of weight (a symptom of the unhappiness) and just started to feel as though every single thing in my life is out of control.

The truth is that it is out of my control. Life has its own agenda and it’s probably not one that lines up with my own. The problem is that in these times of flux, I start to lose the person I am and start being the person I think I should be. I’m the person who projects this happy persona online as well as to my family and friends. When I try to tell people the things I’m going through or deviate from the merry person I usually am, people get freaked out. Which then in turn makes me pretend more that everything is OK when it’s not.

I don’t like to burden people with my problems. I don’t like people to think that things aren’t perfect because then they’re going to feel sorry for me or feel like they need to fix it for me. The truth is, I just want to be able to be honest about my feelings no matter how negative or positive they are. I want to feel OK with not being happy and I want to be able to just feel a bit sorry for myself when I’m going through really rough patches.

That’s the truest statement I’ve ever written in my life. Life is full of rough patches. So many rough patches that they often times throw us off the life plan we thought we had. But for some reason, society doesn’t want us to talk about when we’re sad. We’re supposed to post picture perfect Instagram photos from faraway places with giant toothy grins plastered on our face. We’re supposed to write hilarious Facebook posts about something our dog or kids did. We’re supposed to tweet motivational sayings to inspire the people around us.

I don’t want to do that all the time. I want to feel the very real feelings of being sad or hurt or angry. I want to be able to tell people ‘hey right now things are not going well’ and not feel like someone is judging me.

Because if I could ‘just be happy’ I would. I very much promise you I would. I would wake up every day feeling happiness pour out of me like it’s something I can’t control. I would stand up and shout about the fact that every damn day is the best day and we should all be grateful to be alive. I would love to be able to tell people that everything about life is beautiful and that we’re all going to be just fine.

But that’s not real. Unfortunately, that will never be a reality for anyone. Bad days happen. Terrible life events occur. We wake up some days questioning our place on this Earth. Life is not linear happiness. It never will be.

So, you’re allowed to not be happy. It’s OK to feel bad for yourself and take time to recharge. It’s alright if you want to cut everyone off and focus on yourself till you get out of your slump. Your life isn’t perfect but even on the bad days it’s worth it.

Be sad. Be happy. Be whatever it is you’re feeling right now. But never forget to be true to you and your emotions.