Choosing Happiness over Strength

Now that I feel myself becoming happier by the day (literally, the upward curve is insane!) – I’ve taken some time on reflecting how I got to be where I am now, and how I prevented myself from getting here a lot sooner.

These types of reflections – where you honestly and critically look at your behavior, not through a lens of defending your actions or justifying your emotions, but through a lens of objective observation and brutal honesty – can be equally painful as they can be enlightening. But as such: they’re damn important. Especially if, like me, you can share the outcomes and (hopefully) influence some of the brains around you as well. To prevent them from being the same dumbass you yourself have been on many an occasion. Voila.

So. In general – I feel like I know myself pretty well. I know how I tick, and why I tick the way I tick on most of my ticks. I’ve come to grips with a lot of the cogs that make me tick a little differently than most people tick, and I’ve found ways to handle the strange ticks when they’re ticking me away from normal ticks. All in all, I’d say I’ve got a good grip on who I am as a person, and what I need in regards to personal happiness.

However. One of the strange things about me, is that there’s often a hierarchy to the things I’m trying to achieve. And that hierarchy is often less-than-optimal. Strange. Stupid, even.

An example. I, like many other people, aspire to be happy. I aspire to be strong. I aspire to be loved and love in return. And I aspire to own a great number of fluffy small creatures. But in the grand scheme of things – I often find myself working harder to be strong that I do on being happy. And I sometimes place my own happiness before finding love with someone else. And when I get the chance to pet something fluffy? All of the other things totally fade to the background.

Thing is. Sometimes that order might be incorrect.
Or, were I to prioritize differently – I might sooner land in a spot where I have all of them at the same time. But looking at these aspirations, ambitions and (the correctness of) their hierarchy is often not something that’s easily done in the heat of the moment.

A painful example here is the past year of my life, and the heartbreak that ruled most of it. My priorities, as proven in the last month, had been all fucked up and thus prevented me from achieving maximum potential. Because these past few months you’ve all seen me putting ‘being strong’ before ‘being happy’ and well: That is a stupid hierarchy, because when you’re happy, being strong is a whole lot easier.

You see: my brain is kinda simple. It works very much in an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ (uit het oog, uit het hart -out of sight out of heart- , as we Dutch say it more pungently) kind of way. So usually, when I’m experiencing a breakup, I cut these people (and anyone associated with them) from my life entirely. If I don’t see them? Hear them? Read about them or are otherwise confronted with their existence: they don’t actually exist as far as my heart and mind are concerned. Getting over someone is easy.

But when, during these past 6 months, the ex in question was constantly still making himself visible throughout my day to day goings-on (by loving content on my blog, or commenting on fake accounts, or people reaching out to me to report on his actions) –  getting over ‘it’ proved damn near impossible. Every time his name popped up, I was thrown back into vivid memories. Every time I heard ‘his’ phone sounds – I felt the instant pangs of loss.

And every time I would tell myself to get over it. To be strong, because strong is at the top of my ‘should be’ pyramid.

Blocking him felt like I would be losing somehow. So did banning him from commenting on the blog. And when several subtle hints that he wasn’t wanted didn’t work, I decided to just suck it up and not let him know how he was (still) getting to me. Constantly. Pretend that I didn’t notice. Act like I didn’t see. Fake that I was doing fine regardless of any attempts to counteract that.
Even though I KNEW I needed him gone in order to get over him – I placed more value in seeming and acting ‘strong’ over allowing myself a chance of happiness.

Until I didn’t.

And when I finally got up the nerve to step up and TELL him to back the hell off. To DEMAND that he’d stopped attempts at being in my life and to DISSAPPEAR from it entirely. When I finally broke the silence for that one conversation that I’d been dreading, but still got the result I needed – everything slid into place.

Because out of sight WAS out of mind. Out of sight WAS out of heart. Because when I stopped seeing his name every other day, I stopped thinking about him altogether. And when I stopped looking for past comments and picture, I forgot about them as a whole.

A heartbreak that had haunted me for months on end evaporated quicker than Olaf the snowman in the blistering summerheat. And as the weight of him was taken off of my chest and heart, I felt that instantly flourish back to life. Opening up to possibility, happiness and the man who now stole it right as it was bursting with new love to give.

So what I’m trying to say is that you need to be honest with yourself about your needs.
The point I’m trying to get across is that you should be aware of that hierarchy.
And what I’m mostly trying to convey is that you HAVE the power to change them both. Your needs AND their hierarchy ARE in your control. And as such you ARE the captain to your own happiness.

Sometimes you just have to allow yourself to be happy, instead of trying to be strong.
You’ll get to be stronger for it after. I promise.