The Happy Place Effect … Again?

I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting in the latter of the year. To be honest, this has been the hardest year of my life. I’ve dealt with loneliness, with loss, and with my mental health in a way I never have before.

I referenced this last year when I first wrote about Emily Henry’s novel Happy Place. You can read that here. The reason I wrote about this before is because I was having a tough week, and to try to help with that, I picked up Happy Place. Yes, I already knew the book wasn’t all happy. But I also knew it was going to help me think. And it did.

I was able to really reflect on the place I was at in my life and I was in a better position to go after what I wanted after reading the book.

So when I started struggling again this year, I tried to fix it with the knowledge I gained, but it didn’t help. To be honest, I started spiraling even more. I was feeling so sad, every day. I was feeling like I was doing things out of obligation, not out of desire. There were days I didn’t want to talk to people and there were days when I leaned on people in ways I never have before. I’m not a good leaner, but I realized I needed to be.

I have so many people – I don’t think we realize how much people love us until we need them. And as much as I wish it didn’t take struggle or strife for us to realize this, I’m happy to know how many people I have in my corner and how many people I would be there for in a heartbeat if they needed me.

Even so, I was feeling this crippling sense of loneliness. A type of loneliness I’ve never experienced. When I wrote about Happy Place last year, I wrote about how I thrive being on my own. And suddenly, I wasn’t just on my own, but I was feeling alone. There’s a difference. In the right situation, I’m content in solitude. But what I’m not content with is feeling alone. I know I have all of these wonderful, beautiful, special people in my life, and even when I was physically with them, I felt this crippling loneliness I’ve never felt before.

The loneliness, coupled with my deep-rooted sadness… I didn’t know what to do.

And then, my boyfriend at the time lost someone very close to him. And now, it wasn’t just my world I wanted to fix, it was his.

I have this notorious habit, thinking everything is just always going to be okay. That even if someone gets sick, it’s fine, they’re going to be fine. And this year taught me that that’s not the case.

I should point out, I always knew that it wasn’t the case, but I guess I was lucky enough in my life to let myself keep believing it was.

But suddenly, here I was, being forced to understand and accept that things don’t always work out the way we want. That we experience loss and it’s not okay, but it has to be. The world’s going to keep moving. It’s like that quote from Tuesdays With Morrie – “My old professor, meanwhile, was stunned by the normalcy of the day around him. Shouldn’t the world stop? Don’t they know what has happened to me?”

And shouldn’t it have? But it never does stop.

So here I was. I needed to figure out how to put the pieces of my life back together. And I felt like it was my job now to put his world back together too. It was a task I never could have accomplished, but I still tried.

We’d been dating over a year at this point. We dated for almost six months before we made things official. But the label didn’t matter to me, I loved him before we defined anything about the relationship, and the irony is that I never even told him. And it turns out, at the end of the relationship, the label didn’t really matter either. Before we broke up, I was already starting to have to accept that we weren’t really in much of a relationship anymore. While he was coming to grips with the end of a relationship of his, I was starting to come to terms with the end of mine, silently.

As I tried to figure myself out this summer and bleeding into this fall, I was feeling this sadness over not being able to not feel sad. And I was also grieving this person I had never met. I was crying day in and day out, over a person I didn’t know. And I didn’t feel entitled to any of my grief.

I didn’t think it was fair that this loss was hitting me so hard and I didn’t think it was fair to share any of those feelings with my boyfriend. Why would the loss be affecting me so much when I didn’t even know the person, and how could I ask him to comfort me, when he was dealing with so much worse?

I just put on a good face whenever I could. Sometimes, I surprised even myself with how good I was at it. And other times, I felt like my broken pieces would never be able to fit back together.

So that’s when I picked up Happy Place again. I remembered how much reflecting I did last year when I read it, so what would make this year different? I’d probably get more out of it, right?

Kind of. Just not how I thought.

The book hit way too close to home this time. In the novel, the main character Harriet is coming off a breakup. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to say that the reason Harriet and Wyn broke up is because when Wyn was dealing with the loss of his father, Harriet felt like she needed to be the one who kept it all together. She felt like she needed to let Wyn feel his emotions, that she needed to be supportive, but not needy. To be okay when he wasn’t. To not ask too much, or to ask anything of him. She knew he was dealing with something much larger than she was and how could she let her emotions take precedence?

This was eye opening for me last year because I firmly stated I never wanted to be like Harriet when it came to dealing with loss and grief and relationships. I wanted to put my best foot forward and go after what I wanted and tell my boyfriend (who wasn’t yet my boyfriend) how I felt. And I did. We started officially dating two days after I posted The Happy Place Effect. And I was so proud of myself for initiating the conversation and really putting out there what I wanted.

But when I read the book this summer, I realized that yes, I did that. But I didn’t keep doing it. In fact, I actually did exactly what I said I didn’t want to do. I reverted back to the chill, go-with-the-flow type of girl in our relationship. And when dealing with grief, I did exactly what Harriet did. I put his emotions above my own (to be honest though, I still stand by that), but I also didn’t ask for too much, I tried to talk about my emotions as little as possible, I tried to need as little as possible. But I wasn’t being fair to myself, and if I’m really honest, it wasn’t that fair to him either.

We’ve broken up since, and I’ve realized one big, big thing: no matter how fast and how far I run, I’m still there. My struggles and my emotions, they’re still there. Okay, I didn’t just realize this, I stole the quote from Love, Rosie by Cecelia Ahern. The actual quote is this: You can run and run as fast and as far as you like, but the truth is, wherever you run, there you are.

I read this quote for the first time over a decade ago, it’s from my favorite book. I bookmarked it because I liked it, but it didn’t resonate until now. Now, I can see just how true it is and how strongly I’ve felt it this fall.

My problems from this spring are still here. I’m still trying to figure out why I’m not finding fulfillment in my job or my daily life the way I used to. I’m still feeling lonely, even when I’m not alone. Only difference now is that I’m facing all of this as a single woman, but a boyfriend isn’t supposed to fix those things. Those are things that I need to fix inside of myself before I can ever imagine sharing my life with someone else.

I’ve been keeping myself so busy this fall – I traveled to Hawaii by myself, something I’ve wanted to do for years. It’s the farthest I’ve been from home, and I did it alone, and I was happy to. I visited my college roommate on the island, one of my dearest friends in the world, but I flew alone, and I had most days to myself while she worked. I’m proud of the journey and I’m grateful for the time I was able to spend with my friend. We haven’t time together like that since college. I’ve also been writing, I’m actually within reach of finishing a workable manuscript for a novel I’ve been writing for years. I’ve taken myself to concerts. I got my ear pierced, something I’ve been saying I wanted to do since before college. My cousin, one of my favorite people in the world, visited a couple weeks ago.

I’m doing things for myself, things that are making me happy and things I should be proud of (and I am proud of them), but I’m still here, wondering why it doesn’t feel like it’s enough, wondering why I still feel empty. I keep running – I’m keeping myself so busy, and yet, the second I stop, I remember everything I left behind. I feel it all.

I still have things to figure out. I realize this. I don’t know what the solutions are. I don’t know how to make every single day a good one. But I do know the type of happiness I’m striving for, the type of bone deep happiness you can only feel when you’re fulfilled by yourself, not by any external stimuli.

I might not be there yet, but I do think I’m on the right track. And if I’m not, then I’ll figure it out. I trust myself and I trust that the people I’ve surrounded myself with will continue to support me.

Why link any of this to Happy Place? Because I love this book. I love this story and these characters. I love fiction and I especially love when fiction can help me look at my own life and see where I need to improve. Even if I don’t actually succeed at making and maintaining the change on my first try.

And the bigger point: if you’re struggling, you don’t have to face it alone. You have an army standing behind you, even if it doesn’t always feel that way. At the end of the day, YOU have to be the one to solve your problems, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t people who can help guide you ♡