Are You Happy or Sad?

I gasped for air.  I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe, and somehow I still heard myself scream.  I thought I was dying.

One evening I started a blog post I couldn’t finish.  I wrote it, I stared at it, and I deleted it.  Then I cried. 

Life has been really good for me the past month.  I finished a semester, I got good grades, I took a vacation, I got a pay raise, I leave the house regularly, and I have even better things to look forward to.  Sometimes I feel so happy and encouraged!

That is not why I cry. 

The National Institute of Mental Health says not every traumatized person develops post-traumatic stress disorder.  It actually surprised me to see how high I scored on the screening tests.  Then my roommate woke up to my screaming (again) and I stopped feeling so surprised.  PTSD is an anxiety disorder which can develop months or years after a traumatic event.  Since I was 17 I’ve always felt a little traumatized by the newest illness, but this year was different.  This year really pushed me over the edge. 

For me, that means that I often feel panicky and unsafe.  I don’t sleep very well.  Sometimes I pace the floor and cry, either from fatigue or fear.  I feel disconnected, disinterested, and detached.  I feel numb.  I am avoidant, irritable, and I startle easily.  Breathing exercises used to help; now I am so afraid my lungs will stop working, I can’t even think about them.

For some of my readers, it might seem like all I do is cry, shake my fist at heaven, and then blog about it.  That’s ridiculous.  I’m actually not that terrible to be around.  I even act like a normal person.   But what you read about in 2 minutes, I carry with me all the time and if I didn’t cry and shake my fist at heaven every now and then, I’d hardly be human.  Are you?

I still find something to enjoy in every day: a visit from a friend, a plate of chocolate chip cookies, feeding ducks in the park with my favorite 12-year-old, cleaning my room, thinking about the mass to surface area ratio of a cat falling from the sky.  Learning how to cope with the trauma of adulthood is just a work in progress.  Every day is different for me.  I still remember the hepatitis.  I remember cringing from the zipper rubbing against my back at prom after traction therapy.  I remember Mom spending the night on the floor in my room in case I needed to go to the ER.  I remember not having any friends.  I remember wanting to hurt myself.  I remember when I stopped breathing.  No one remembers it like I do.  But for today I was happy, and I’ll remember that too.  Happy to be alive.  Happy to be myself.  Happy to have friends.  Happy to go on a hike.  Happy to do my own laundry and cooking.

Professor Donald N. Wright said: Of all the people in the world, we have reason to be the most happy and to have the greatest measure of peace in our lives because of the hope within us. We know the Lord and understand His example—an example of happiness. He was not steeped in pleasure for, as noted by Isaiah, He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). True happiness is born of our understanding that in the midst of joy or trial He is “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). It is possible, because of Him, to have peace deep within our souls when all about there is confusion, tumult, and temptation. It is possible because of Him to be truly happy.

Tomorrow I might cry and that's okay; but today I am happy.