Joy Has a Habit of Returning...

 Have you ever heard of the saying, Joy has a habit of returning? I am not an overly optimistic person, but there are times when I convinced myself to look on the brighter side of things.

Honestly, I've felt sad for such a long time that being so caught up on things that makes me unhappy is so easy, it's almost nostalgic when those same feelings come back; the anger, the sadness, the unsatisfaction, they're like friends coming back from a month-long trip, it's familiar and predictable, and I knew that I would feel them, and I knew they'd come. Eventually, I had to rewire my own brain to believe that joy will find its way back, and it did. 

It was 2016 when I first felt that feeling of being stuck. It was peculiar weight and at the age of 14, I didn't have the words to describe it, but it was paralyzing. There was a day I fell asleep in an awkward position at 14 years old, in our old apartment in Manila. I remember being curled up at the edge of the bed with my legs hanging off, and the big lights were on, the lights burnt through my closed eyelids, and I remember my aunt and two of my cousins sitting on the floor sharing a plate full of adobo, and I remember being unable to move. I knew I opened my eyes like cracking a door, and I remember dreaming of a clown chasing me down a grocery aisle while looking at my cousins sitting on the floor at the same time. I thought, if I could just move my fingertips, I would wake up, and this nightmare would be over. I didn't know then, and not until three years later, that same experience was called sleep paralysis. I guess, in a better word, depression was the same thing for me. For many years, I had thought that if I could just, maybe, figure something out, move a finger, find some happiness in the cracks of my daily life, then, and only then, the nightmare would be over. 

At 18 years old, I found myself living in a broken-down trailer in the middle of rural Texas. I had used concrete slabs as the foundation for my trailer since its original metal rods had since rotten and broken away. I worked as a clerk for the neighborhood clinic, earning as little as $700 every two weeks, with my trailer rent of $400 a month, it was enough to keep a roof over my head, and that was about it. Struggle was an understatement, but I found that my sadness, and rather, my anger to it all, emphasized the depression I felt. The more I struggled, the more I felt hopeless, and helpless, and sometimes, worthless. 

Now, at 24 years old, I see sadness in a whole completely different way. More like, a temporary thing. I know deep down that regardless of how sad I feel, that joy and peace, ultimately, will return to me. So, one day as I was speaking with my co-worker, who I know have the same struggles I did a few years ago, I held my tongue from saying, "just try to be happy," because I know that it isn't as easy as saying. So, it got me thinking: what was the turning point for me? When did I just stopped feeling so hopeless and helpless, and became a happier person? 

Here's the thing that most therapists and emotionally supportive friends would not tell you, and it will sound harsh, but it is true: Joy does not have a habit of returning. It will not come knocking back to your door at 5 AM, begging for a dry and warm place to stay for the day. It will not call your phone late at night to remind you of what you didn't have. It will not visit on your perfect days where the sun shined at the right spot and the temperature outside is just how you like it. It will not return. Only because it will not return to the same place it left from. 

So, if given a question, "Indira, what healed your depression?" I can tell you that it wasn't closing my eyes tighter at 14, hoping that the clown would go away eventually, and it wasn't staying in my beaten-up 1999 trailer in rural, Texas, making the best out of what I had. It definitely wasn't sitting in my room hoping everything would go away. There was only one thing that helped: I decided to get up and move. I realized that, yes, joy will come, but it will not come back here, in the same bed I couldn't get up, in the same place I struggled, in the same relationships I was hurting from. Why would it? Amidst all the darkness, pain, and chaos, why would joy come back here? And why should I stay here?

Joy will not return; although, it will come, but simply, won't return. This is one of the things we seek for, this is what we make space for, throwing the unnecessary baggages, the sadness you felt at 14, the humiliation you felt from that break-up, the times you felt abandoned and ignored, you will have to toss these aside to make space for when you finally find joy again. But she will not return if your house is uncleaned and your baggages stuffed. So, one day, I couldn't pin point when and where, but I decided. I got up from the bed, I pulled the curtains open, I flashed cold water on my face, and I decided that today is the day that I will stop waiting for happiness to return, but rather, I will go ahead and seek it myself. It's not going to come back in this trailer, and it is not coming back to this relationship, and it is not coming to this version of myself: it's time to wake up. Wake up. Smell the coffee. It's time.

You will love again the stranger who was your self. 

Give wine  Give bread. 

Give back your heart to itself, 

to the stranger who has loved you all your life, 

whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes 

peel your own image from the mirror. 

Sit. Feast on your life.

- Derek Walcott