How to find Happiness

It doesn’t take much to make me happy, it never did. It was real rare to feel that sense of happy. I think even when it did come around and it did hit me, I really don’t even think that I knew what it was. Coming from a life where I struggled to find just a little bit of something to help me get through each and every day that I had to live with the family that I was born into. Trying to understand a logic that for some reason, I knew was not right. Try to figure your life out the right way when you are living with the people who think the wrong way is a very hard thing to do.

During my time apart from my family, it has given me time to try to figure a little something about what they thought and why they would even want to think the way they do is way beyond my comprehension. I could spend my whole life trying to figure it out, but I don’t think I could get very far in their ways. I do know now that I am thee happiest that I have ever been in my whole life and that is saying a lot for me. It may not look like a lot to most, but to me, it’s what makes me happy. This is who I am. It shows who I really am and I like it. So, Okay, it all begins............

Some how my mom and dad are related. I just haven’t figured it out yet. This is my theory. I think someone on my dads side had married someone on my mom’s side and they just kept interbreeding. See that’s where it stops. Some how my gramma’s side of the family works into my mom’s side of the family? It is one family name that is not the same but definitely sticks out in the family name. I am hillbilly here talking so just hear me out. Genetics play a very important role in my life. I’m a nurse so naturally that kind of stuff interests me. As much as I try to escape the hillbilly in me, some of it I just can’t shake. I am finding the language sticks harder than other habits.

I became an alcoholic at a very early age. It was my get away from the life that I was born into. I would beg my dad to let me spend the night at my friends houses and it would be rare that he would let me go. I hated being home. I did everything I could to stay out of that place. Dad was abusive. He liked to hit. You couldn’t do anything wrong or fear the slap. And dad had a very short temper.

I had a child at the ripe ate of 15. I think because it was the closest I had come to feeling something. Anything but what I was feeling at home. My mom never talked to me and to expect her to talk anything about sex with me was not even in the books.

My mother resented me. She wouldn’t talk to me. I was on my own trying to learn anything because I learned nothing from my mom. I learned how not to be her. Mom’s are supposed to want their children to succeed. Mine only wished me failure and resented me when I didn’t fail. She hated that I was getting out there and conquering. That is the way my mom and sister were towards me. Two peas in a pod.

Mom was like having two different moms because on one side she could be so sweet, but on another side, mom could be the most venomous person you could ever know. I remember when she left my dad and went to live in this cute little apartment underneath an elderly couple. I guess it used to be there sons room. Quite nice! I was actually impressed with her. She was doing nicely without my dad! She seemed calmer, more relaxed. To this day, I do not understand why she went back to my dad. She was doing well.

Later in years, I asked for her spaghetti recipe. She made thee most amazing spaghetti sauce and I was so spoiled for so long. I could not get used to canned or jarred spaghetti sauce. She kept telling me that she lost the recipe. Why wouldn’t she want me to have a stupid recipe? I still do not have her spaghetti sauce recipe that I had begged for and she always told me she could never find it. Mom never lost anything. Except her mind.

I always thought it was my mother who had no backbone with my father but in reality my mom had all the say. I never realized just how much my mother hated me until she left my father. My father started giving me nice gifts. Mom hated my dad liking me. Mom hated anyone liking me. Mom never invited me to family gatherings because she didn’t want me there showing down my venomous sister who despises me because everybody loved me more than her. I wasn’t out steeling money anywhere I could find it. I wasn’t hurting people to get something in life that wasn’t mine to begin with. Her friends would end up my friends. Well hell yeah sister....who was more interesting Huh? what up....I’m talking her language now.

My family had good intension. They always did,but their intensions ran limited. They were a hard family. There was hardly any emotions shown except for anger. Somehow they just didn’t know how to be nice about anything. Everything was for themselves and they hated looking at successful people. They hated people who actually created a life for themselves. Maybe people like that made them feel inferior? I don’t know. I just know that I am so tired of trying to find reasons for the way that they are. I can not look at them and not say, “What is wrong with you?” “What makes you people think this way?”

That is a point that I am trying to make with my family. I was not like them. I knew right from wrong and felt it. I don’t think that they could even see it and it was always right there in front of them but they blew by it.

I was married by the age of 17 with one child. Without my mom, I don’t know what I would have done. She stepped in...maybe a little too fast and took right over. She became my daughters serogat mother. Mom pretty much raised my daughter up until she turned 3. That is when my husband and I bought our new house. It was actually a camp. A very cool camp surrounded by a river on 3 sides of the camp setting back off the main road about 500 feet! It was quiet, beautiful, natural. Nature was in every direction but one, the one that came from the outside world.

No matter how wrong I knew my childhood family was with the way they viewed living, I had a hard time cutting the cord to go on my own. I guess maybe that was the only thing I really felt about being in that family at that time in my life was that I felt secure, safe. I had a chance to move to Florida when I first married, but I turned that idea down because it really scared the hell out of me moving where my mom couldn’t help me with raising my daughter.

Today I live a whole other kind of life. I can honestly say that I am the happiest I have ever been in my life. Why do I say this? I am going to show you why. I am going to take you on a journey that no one else has ever seen not even my own husband. I am going to show you my life as it is Today.

I like to work in gardens. I had a beautiful garden at my first home. I love sinking my hands into a nice healthy dirt. Today I am trying to grow another garden. A beautiful garden. A garden gives out what you put into it. I like the idea, it’s a lot of hard work and dedication and in the end is very worth the care and time that you put into it. I am ready for it this year!

I live on water! It’s not much for water, but it’s water to me. I have so many water fowl around. I live in a bird sanctuary. Everywhere you look and everything thing you hear is birds! In my neighborhood I think my home alone is the only place that has so many trees around it. For some odd reason people do not like trees around this area. If they have any in their yard, they cut them down. I don’t get that logic. I like the forest touch. I love all of the foliage around me. It’s amazing what you see.

I have created a comfortable back yard that I am proud of for the money I had to spend on it. I try to do my best in the least expensive way. I do have dreams about this place now and I envision things around my home and I know that this can all be possible! The happier I get here, the more I can see things changing. Loving and caring for anything is all it takes that and a little hard work can make it happen.

My home seems to be growing around me and that is a good feeling. I haven’t had this feeling this since I left my last house. I miss my last house. I have had 3 houses and all that my husband and I build from the bottom up all by ourselves. It was a lot of hard work and a lot of growing together to make something happen. It was a passion and is a passion that we both possess. With our new home here, we are just beginning to work on it. It took us 10 years to finally get that feeling of home again. It’s a long time to feel lost. I don’t want to feel lost anymore. I like the feeling of knowing what I have and very happy that I have it.

I saw a wild Bald Eagle face to face just a few weeks ago. Imagine that. I was on my way home from work about mid-morning. I was driving down a country road, one I travel often but have been avoiding because that road takes just a little longer getting home, but today I decided to take that way and enjoy the countryside. Just as I am turning onto another country road I look up and on top of a small electric pole is sitting this huge bird. I’m thinking to myself....eagle....?....Eagle?......EAGLE! and slammed on my breaks. I put my car in park and leaped out of that car. I had left my car door open sitting there running in the road while here I am walking up to that Eagle sitting on top of that pole and talking to him. He sat that and watched me walk right up to him. I was shaking I was so excited. I just could not believe that this was happening to me. I was right there in front of a Bald Eagle right in the middle of no where. MY whole body was shaking from the awesomeness of this creature right there in front of me. And when I came to my senses of what I had just actually done, this is what I was looking at....

I began to really look at what was there in front of me. I saw his eyes staring right into mine. I began to feel the immense courage of this bird. Then as I stood there I began looking at the whole bird and was beginning to realize just how LARGE this bird was in front of me. I think if he were standing next to me, he could reach my hips level. I saw his Talons! Oh my God! Those TALONS, those very big talons! I slowly began to walk back to my car while he just sat there staring at me, never made any move, just sat there staring at me. I finally got back into my car only to sit in the seat with my legs hanging out so I could keep watching him from a safer distance. But yeah, I got to see a Bald Eagle face to face.

I am working two jobs now. I have bills growing over my head. I feel like I am beginning to sink. Money will help this situation so I am going to do what I have to do. I wanted to move. I really want to be down in a warmer part of the country having to work for the rest of my life, but that’s okay. My husband won’t move and I don’t want to leave my husband again. I tried to get him to follow me and that didn’t work. So I will settle here where I am still very happy.

We have tried to move 3 times and each time was unsuccessful. We sold our last house and I bought a trailer in a trailer park for $3,000. It was supposed to be temporary but it kept going on and on. Finally I said enough was enough and walked out. Before I left I told my husband that he could come with me but I was not going to stay living in that dump hole that I bought for $3,000 just to live in until he bought us a new home and he did nothing. He drove his dumptruck, came home, got drunk, went to bed, got up so sick that he would throw up before leaving for work. I remember seeing him trying to drag himself out that door to get to work and the day started all over again. I could not live that kind of life. So I prepared for another life with my husband knowing full well of what was going on. After 10 months of living without me, my husband finally lands this place that we are in now. I realize now that my husband will never leave his home area. Each time we sold our home, I lost who I was each time. I had to start fresh and figure out my life all over again. Our life.

The feeling that I held close to me when I lived in my last home. It was a beautiful home that my husband and I build together.....out of our own minds.....I loved that house. It had thee most beautiful sunrises and sunsets. You could sit under one porch on one side of the house in the morning and sit on the evening porch at night. Today here at this home, I have no sunrises or sunsets. I live in a hollow just outside a small town in the countryside.

It is not a bad place where we live now. I am actually getting used to it. It has actually really began to grow around us now. It only took 10 years to get this feeling back again. 10 years of trying to get my husband up and moving again. I finally had to tell him that I love the place that he bought for me to come home to, but he was doing nothing with it. It was falling down around us, literally. I started looking for employment elsewhere....Like a warmer state where I knew that I thought it would be easier for me. But like I said, my husband will never leave home. That is okay.

My husband is retired now. He is eleven years older me. He took such good care of me my whole life. Now I feel that it is my turn to take as good of care of him as he did for me. I want him to truly be happy. Lots of stuff has happened that is hard to get past, but it won’t make it impossible to be happy. I am happy to have my husband home while I go to work. He is my best friend and confidante. I am absolutely and totally in love with him! He is the only person that I can truly talk to. He does everything that I ask of him without question and he is happy to do it for me. He is always home for me and our dogs. The idea of my husband being home is the most comforting feeling. Best of all, he has always been there for me and my dogs. I never could stand the idea of my dogs being alone. My dogs were abused as babies and I have been so overprotective of them both.

I love my backyard now. I am making it me. The feeling of home is beginning to grow inside me and I am spreading that feeling around where I live. My home is becoming something I can be really happy in.

There is a pond which sets in our back yard, literally. It’s beautiful with all of the foliage and fowl. This will be the second home that we have owned on water. Our first home that we built together was a camp that overhung an old bridge on an old road. That house was haunted. There were ghosts that we actually saw there. There were a lot of unsettled spirits that had died on that bridge. I am very sensitive to spirits and nature. That could be a reason that when I move to another area, it takes me a while to adjust. But that’s not true either. I had a nice time adjusting to our land where we built our homes. It was this last move that really hurt. No home to go to. That is a hard feeling. A sad feeling.

But I am finally home! At least a place where I can get myself together again. Maybe this is a good thing and I will finally find my true happiness. Do we ever find our true happiness? I feel like I have been praying to God to help me find true happiness my whole life. It took this long to find it. Maybe true happiness is just inside me waiting for me to find it? It’s up to me to make that happen? All I know is I have that feeling again and I am building off that.

I work to have a better home. My home is my life. My interests in the outside world don’t travel too far anymore. My travels were never that grand. So I gave up on the idea of ever seeing too much in life. I just stick with my home life and build off of that.

I have a garden that I spend time caring for. I have a very caring personality. I love taking care of anything or anyone that needs caring for. I healed a morning dove. I found a morning dove with a broken wing and found an old bird cage, very nice old bird cage at a garage sale and put the dove in the cage while he healed. When he was ready to set free, Igently scooped him up out of the cage and went to the opened door and tossed him into the air. He immediately came flying back at me and hit me in the head. But he did fly back around and flew off! He stuck around my home for a few weeks and then I didn’t see him anymore.

There are so many different birds around me right now. I love bird watching. I have always watched birds and listened to their songs. When I used to go down to my parents to visit, I would say out loud which bird was singing and my mom was always amazed at me because I knew the birds by their songs. I have a concrete birdbath that my mother-in-law gave to us. I put it beside my garden and the birds enjoy the cool water in the bird bath while feeding on the bugs around my garden. I am waiting for my garden to grow beautiful. I am so excited and anticipating the greatness this summer will bring to us. We have a lot of plans for our home.

So this is my story and this is what gives me most satisfaction and happiness. I have found my true happiness in life and I intend to hold onto that feeling for as long as I can. Things can only get better from here on out. That is what I am working for.