Rinse and repeat

There was a time I believed I was happy. Once, I could say the word and it lit the room like a small lamp. Back then, happiness wore no label and needed no defense. It hovered at the back of my throat, drifted through my head. I knew it when it came. I didn’t need a cat video to coax a laugh or a pint of vanilla to bribe a smile. Happiness wasn’t something I held; it held me. It was the lightness of a small camping chair set on a shy strip of shore, no one around—only the water’s hush, birds stitching the air, the wind sweeping the rest away.

And I knew it would pass. Nothing keeps forever, they say, don’t they? Even as I floated, some part of me counted the seconds to its leaving. I feared I would lose it before I could taste it whole, like a fruit snatched clean from my palm. I lived as if in a trance—the world could burn and I would still be suspended in that nameless calm—and threaded through it was a whisper: hold your horses, you fool; this will end.

So I kept circling the same track: worrying about letting go, worrying about the wound to come, worrying about who I’d be after. And the worrying curdled what was sweet. The little draught of joy went flat on my tongue, stale at the edges, twisting my stomach.

Then the old ache returned—sadness with its patient face. I thought time would wear it down. It did, in its way, but it left a map on me. Some marks are scratches. Some are jagged and deep. Some I still trace with a finger, asking what bargain I made to be caught in this rinse and repeat.

Maybe I will never know. Maybe happiness is a word we invented to sell the soul a promise it cannot keep.

If I am not happy, then what am I?