Happiness Is Not Always a Choice, but Love Is.

"Choose to be happy," they'll say.

I'm sure you've been told a thousand times over, that happiness is a choice. It's a lovely sentiment, and for many people it's even an important truth.

But for me, it hasn't always been that way.

You see, happiness is triggered in our brain by chemicals like our endorphins, dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. 

And the release of these chemicals hasn't always been my choice, just like a diabetic can't choose to produce insulin to balance out their blood sugar, or a cancer patient can't will their cells into behaving themselves.

Because when I was 13 I was diagnosed with depression. 

At first it was considered "situational." 

My family had moved to Beijing, I struggled to make friends, and then my parent's marriage fell to pieces and our home filled with darkness. 

Unfortunately, the situation didn't end there. 

High school, despite the friendships I walked out of there with, was basically a room without doors, set on fire. I'd come home to find my house egged or TP'd, or go to school to hear a new rumor being spread. I was called so many ugly words, enough to fill a novel.

And the situations continued.

I moved out when I was 17, and started college at the same age. I was a child in a world of adults, without a lot of guidance. I gave my heart to the wrong people, let the media be my mother, and made a lot of mistakes. Over the years, sadness had changed me so much, that when I looked at myself in the mirror I didn't recognize the girl who stared back.  She had empty eyes. She was a stranger. I didn't know that girl at all. 

"Situational" depression changed my appearance, my countenance, and in time it changed my brain chemistry. 

The situations weren't my choice, and the residual sadness grew to be out of my control too. 

But what I learned from those years, was that while happiness might not be a choice, love is.

Love has been my healing balm, perhaps even my cure. 

I began with simple choices of love. 

I wrote love letters and left them quietly on door steps.

I took myself to the movies.

I got a pup, who craved love more than I did.

And those tiny choices had a butterfly effect, to even larger acts of love.

I traveled to distant lands to offer love to those who had never even seen it in a movie.

I showed my body love by taking care of it, treating it like the sacred vessel for my spirit it truly is, despite its defects.

I learned how to ask for love, to invite people to take care of me in return, to ask to be kissed gently when I needed it.

And love, it turned out, was the secret to happiness after all. 

Happiness; once it found me, felt like romance. Happiness, when it finally spent the night and gently awoke me in the morning for breakfast, felt familiar. Happiness, once it reciprocated to me, what I had invested into it, felt deserved. It felt like I had written love letters to a man for years, and he had finally arrived at my door, gotten down on one knee with peonies, and said:

    “I always knew we belonged together, it should never have taken so long for me to get here. I’m so sorry. I want to wake up every morning next to you for the rest of my life.” 

Part of me had my hesitations, resisting Happiness, because I knew he would leave again. But I trusted that even when he was gone, he would return. Even though difficult times are still ahead, Happiness wasn’t messing around anymore. He had finally figured out what he was missing out, by not loving me back, by not gently kissing my face each day. Happiness and I had belonged together all along. Happiness was made for me. 

But "Happiness" didn’t necessarily look like a man, it just felt like one.

Because happiness, is just love's manifestation through the chemicals in our brain.

And while happiness might not be a choice, love is.

And so even when my body is fatigued, my energy low, my dopamine neurons shot,

I choose love. 

And in return, love chooses me.

And I've truly never been happier.

@saltyrachel

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