Redefining Happiness

As a child I used to lie in bed at night and day dream about how my life would pan out, imagining the fairytale Prince who would sweep me off my feet, the beautiful house we would make a home, the adorable children, and the wonderful, happy life we would live together in our perfect world. And although as I grew up I realised that the likelihood of marrying a prince was pretty unlikely, I still had high hopes for my future and the life I would live. And so at eighteen, when I met my first husband, a part of me really thought that I’d found it.

Call me naive, call me stupid, but at no point in any of my day dreams did I imagine a life where mental illness would steal my happiness, where babies would die and hearts would be broken, where the handsome Prince would ride off into the sunset with a Princess far fairer than I. At no point did I imagine a life where I would find myself thirty years old, a single parent to a four year old son, grieving for my second born, struggling to find a way forward and not even sure that I wanted to.

I can’t lie, life has been difficult over the years in ways I could never begin to explain and ways I’m not even sure I would want to. For such a long time I simply accepted that this was the hand I had been dealt, that this overwhelming feeling of sadness meant that happiness was no longer mine, that to simply exist was the best I could hope for. But with a little hand in mine, and the support of those around me, I learned that although my life had not turned out the way I had hoped, there was still a life out there for me to live, and slowly but surely I made those baby steps forward. We bought a house, just Lewis and I, I went back to college, I started work, we laughed and we smiled and we blindly groped our way through until one day, completely out of nowhere, I felt that familiar glimmer of hope in my heart.

And over the years that little glimmer of hope has grown stronger, when Gaz came along and captured both mine and Lewis’s hearts, when Eva was born and placed in my arms, our wedding day, the arrival of Megan, of Harry, a house to call a home again, a job I love and adore. And what was once a glimmer of hope, mere snippets of joy amongst so much sadness, is now a beacon of happiness, consuming us all with so much joy; what was once an empty void of loss and of longing, is now effervescing with love and fulfilment.

And reading this you may think how wonderful it is that I finally found my fairy tale ending after all this time but, the truth is, I really didn’t. Because if life has taught me anything it’s that happiness is nothing like a fairytale, not even close. It’s not about handsome Princes and beautiful Princesses, it’s not all hearts and flowers, fame and fortune, and it’s certainly not about living happily ever after. Real happiness is whatever you want it to be, and whatever you need it to be, and you can redefine happiness as many times as is necessary in order to survive.

For us, for me, our happiness will always be clouded by grief and learning to accept that has been a long road. There will always be times when I look around the table at my four beautiful children and feel that pang of longing for the fifth. There will always be times when hearing Joseph’s name said out loud takes away my breath, wondering what he would look like now, who he would be, how our lives would have been as a family of seven. There will forever be moments when I silently reflect on all that we went through and all that we lost, when my arms ache and my heart breaks, and the tears feel like they will never stop.

But now I no longer wake each morning and measure my mood by how happy I feel there and then because I know that those fleeting moments don’t constitute a day. I no longer beat myself up for finding life difficult, for the moments I feel down, or the days when happiness passes me by altogether, because I know that this sadness is transient, that just because I don’t feel happy today, doesn’t mean I won’t feel happiness tomorrow.

And I guess what I’ve really learned is that you can feel both happy and sad at any given time, and that’s okay. You can long for a life you had planned whilst still feeling grateful for the life you had. You can be thankful for the children in your arms whilst still mourning the child you have lost. You can laugh until your sides hurt one day and cry until your heart breaks the next. You can feel complete and fulfilled sometimes, and empty and lost at others. You can laugh and smile and feel total and utter joy, and still be a little bit broken on the inside. You can have everything you ever wanted right there in front of you, and still know that it will never be enough.

The truth is, happiness isn’t about being happy every minute of every day, it’s nothing like we see in the movies or read about in books. Happiness can change from one day to the next, in any given moment, and it’s perfectly okay for that bar to keep moving as and when you need it to.

I know that I will never know happiness in the way I once did, in the days when I was blissfully naive, when dreams always came true and hearts remained unbroken, but redefining happiness, knowing that happiness is different for each of us, means that I can stand here today and tell you that I could not be happier.

And for those of you still waiting, you will be too.