I spent a long time collecting reasons not to be happy – and all of them were valid.
I was hurt, overlooked, mistreated, misunderstood.
I carried what others should have carried. They should have known better, been accountable, changed their ways. I remembering trying to speak to them about their behaviour, or confided in someone who brushed off my experience.
Sometimes, I kept their secrets to protect a loved one, or endured their silences because I refused to play their game. I built walls not because I wanted to, but because the world taught me early that softness was unsafe.
There came to an impasse, where I had decide that the past no longer defined the quality of my present. Happiness , I decided, was not a reward for those who had an easy story – it was an act of rebellion for those like me.
It was a quiet, deliberate choice to stop rehearsing my pain and begin reclaiming my life on my terms, because deep down, I already knew what I knew.
Choosing happiness did not erase what happened. It did not excuse cruelty or dismiss my wounds. It simply meant I no longer was willing to make those wounds – or the people who caused them – my mental and emotional home. I can honour my pain without worshipping it. I can remember without reliving.
And yes, the world, kept insisting that happiness was naïve, that in choosing happiness, I ignored depth, injustice, reality and that I was a victim.
But now I know this – happiness, when chosen consciously, is the deepest form of wisdom.
It is not the absence of awareness; it is the presence of perspective. It is what happened when I stopped waiting for others to change and began building a life that nourishes my spirit today, on my terms.
So I released the need to make every scar my identity.
I allowed myself to have joy even if my story is unfinished, even if my heart still trembled when I trusted again. I refuse to believe that I am betraying my past when I choose to live fully.
I am redeeming my life. I am telling the past, I am done with being your prisoner.
And in that space, I learned happiness is neither always laughter or sunlight.
Sometimes it’s a quiet evening where I breath steady again.
Sometimes it’s choosing to let something go without bitterness.
Sometimes it’s simply waking up and saying, “I am still here, and that is enough for today.”
I have learned that the choice to be happy is not about pretending.
It is about returning to myself, and to the life that is still waiting beyond my pain.
I meet it daily noe because it has been waiting patiently for me.
~ Evgenia Pimżin