Imperfectly Happy

There is no possible way to be perfect. It is an expectation that is unreachable. So happiness should never be based on trying to be perfect. Life is messy and hard, and kicks you down just to kick you some more. But finding happiness is not as hard as it may seem. And it is not at the end of some long journey to someplace else. inside every person, their true happiness lies. You just have to be willing to look there first, and accept yourself regardless of the world telling you-you are flawed. Because flaws are amazing. Flaws are what makes us individuals. And once you open up, and embrace your own flaws, you can find joy in everything.

My whole life I have lived trying to make everyone around me happy, and although this is not a bad thing, I lost my own happiness along the way.

But over the last 8 months, I have been actively trying to find myself in the mess of what my life had become.

I moved, I started smoking, I started drinking more, I started dating a guy, and based my happiness on him. I went in a lot of not so good directions. I hoped that I could find my own happiness in one of the many new things I was trying. But I came up short every time, and I just felt sad all the time, because everything I was looking to for happiness let me down. And even through all of my changes, I was still so caught up in what everyone else was thinking of me.

But just in the last couple months, I have somehow found the switch in my mind, and I found that I don’t need to rely on anything else to make me happy, the happiness I was searching for was already inside me, I just had to open my eyes long enough to see it.

It is not in another person, or music or booze or drugs, it is in me. And for the first time in my life, I have found balance.

I learned to love myself. Regardless of my flaws, because flaws will never go away. They are with us till the end. Loving yourself through your flaws is the first step to finding balance.

The world tells us that we need to be a certain way, or think a certain way, or feel a certain way, and the truth is, you don’t have to fall in line, and be like everyone else. Because everyone is flawed, so you will be disappointed if you change for others, just to find you have new flaws. Be happy with yourself, and everyone will either be happy for you, or they will hate you for embracing yourself. But don’t ever let them pull you down. Because you don’t need them to be happy.

I stopped letting others negative words and actions dictate who I wanted to become, and I truly became free.

And although sometimes the fear and sadness try to creep back into my mind, I am ready to fight it back off again. I can’t say that it is always easy, it is usually not. But giving up is never an option. There have been so many times that I have wanted to just quit, but what good would that do for me, or for anyone who looks up to me? Nothing. Giving up is never a good idea, and in the end, it’s not worth the pain. Fighting through no matter how hard things get, is what makes you stronger, and makes the next bad thing, a little easier to deal with.

I am not there yet. But I am actively working every day to get myself to the best place I can be. And the truth is, I wouldn’t even be alive anymore if it wasn’t for God, He has helped me find the happiness I was looking for.

And if I could say one thing to help someone else going through what I went through:

KEEP GOING! Life is never hopeless no matter how bad things get, you can always find happiness within yourself.