No More Delayed Happiness
Hey Sunnies,
Happy New Year! Before we get into this blogpost, I wanted to take some time to say thank you. Thank YOU for reading my blog. This started as a form of an online journal and it has grown into an entire garden. I have some big plans for The Sunflower Factory this year and I appreciate each of you and all that you do. I hope you continue with me on this journey through vulnerability and self discovery.
I always thought of myself as a dreamer. Both in the literal sense and the imaginative sense. Like I actually have very vivid and adventurous dreams, so much so that I often wake up like, “OMG I need to tell someone this one!” I’m also a day-dreamer. I would, and still do, find myself starring out of windows imagining a different life for myself. Well, the truth is my ability to day dream has crippled me. It was easy for me to day dream about what my life would be like in the future but hard for me to picture what I need presently. It was almost as if I thought joy and happiness was always only a reality for the future, not the present. It doesn’t help that my entire life has been in school, institutionalized, successfully convinced that happiness would come one day if I just endured today.
My therapist would ask me over and over what do I need from this person to say this thing or what did I need from them in that moment or what I need to hear if I did say this. Well the reality is I was so good at constructing my “future dream”, it was hard for me to picture and articulate my present needs. My needs felt unimportant. It seemed that I knew my needs would be met one day but I was so comfortable with that day, again, not being today. Then, I would become so wrapped up in some life other than the one I was living, some day dream of the future. It’s crazy what 20 years of school can do to you.
My mom bought me some new pillows after I matter-of-factly told her that my neck was hurting because my pillows were too hard. I have the best mom. Well, the night after she bought them I left the pillows wrapped in plastic next to my bed as I turned all the lights off and got in my covers. My initial thought was to wait to put the new pillows on my bed until I did my New Years Eve cleaning and changed my sheets. But then I remembered something my therapist has been telling me for a year. I don’t have to delay my happiness, even if it’s a new pillow for 24 hours, when I can just be happy right then. Everything doesn’t have to be perfect and clean the way I imagine it to have the joy of the moment.
So, I got out my bed, turned the lights on, found some clean pillow cases and got to shimmying those pillows in the cases. Thank God I did because I slept so well. Well, that is my mood for 2022. I’m enjoying every moment when I get it because it will only allow me to make room for more happiness. This year, I’ll continue dreaming but I will also see the joy, in the new pillows, that is right in front of me.
I love and miss you all. I appreciate everyone who checked in and asked where I’d been. I was fighting for my life this semester but I’m back. Take good care of yourselves, Sunnies.
warmly emerging,
Mikaela Amira
