They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
An individual may cycle through any of the various phases for a multitude of reasons. Over time, so they say, things will get better. I know you know that. I know I know that, but something else everyone knows? In those moments, when you are mourning, you simply don’t care.
Why?
Because grief and heartbreak are horrible things. Loss, broken dreams, and faded friendships, equally terrible. Painful. Raw. Unforgiving. All-consuming. Exhausting.
They are not simple. They are not easy. They are not kind.
Days come and go, filled with these emotions. Some are easier than others. On these easy days, life feels normal, and you may flashback to your old self. But on the hard days, you feel like a passive observer in that supposedly normal life – and you still remember your old self. The difference is that on the hard days, your emotions hold you completely and utterly hostage.
Every year, I purchase a bracelet from a company called MyIntent. Their aim is for you to choose one word you plan to live by for an entire year, a much more doable task than making a lengthy list of New Years’ Resolutions that, let’s be honest, you probably won’t keep. When I first wrote On Happiness, I had four – Smile, Farmer Jade, Greensboro, and Seek.
Smile
As I’ve mentioned throughout, I have always thought of myself – and been considered – a pretty happy person. I almost always have a smile on my face and aim to impart this to others. I have also always tried to look on the bright side. But at this point in my life, I don’t know if I have experienced a wild amount of trauma, so sometimes, I think I have it pretty easy. I know of others who just seem weighed down by life. I figure a smile is the easiest thing I can always give, something to show these people that while I might not always understand their pain, I see it, I see them. For myself, too, I wanted a simple reminder that at the very least, each day, I could give myself a smile. That even though the load on my plate appeared less in comparison, a smile could help me take on my life with a bit more enthusiasm and positivity.
Farmer Jade
The second bracelet I acquired was given to me by one of my best friends. I had just started farming that year, so it had become my nickname among my college friends. Truly, though, after my first day working on a farm, I was sold – I had discovered my passion and knew it was something that would be a part of my life for a very long time. My friends could see it, too, so that year, I lived by the intention of learning how to be a better farmer.
Greensboro
Queue Greensboro. Farmer Jade took me here. Well, okay, not exactly. Part of my job, while I was in Greensboro, was to be a farmer. As you know from the last chapter, I loved my job. When I was in Greensboro, I was in Greensboro. Though the position only lasted 13 months, and I made it my mission to fully exist within that community, I wanted a reminder to never waste an opportunity.
Seek
Seek has a bit of a different story – this is my bracelet for 2021. I initially thought my word for the year would be “teach,” because I had started my master’s program in agricultural education in August of 2020. In the five months since starting the program, I had come to realize teaching was really more about listening – listening to your students, to those around you, to the structures in place. Listening to the real situation at hand was a better premise for teaching, or so it seemed to me, so I became pretty gung-ho about “listen.”
But then I pivoted.
The word “seek” came me to one day. I had had an epiphany of sorts, and a couple of days later, another of my best friends shared her idea about wanting to start a podcast called Seek.
I won’t speak entirely for her, but in a way, we were both searching for something.
At the beginning of 2021, covid-19 was still pretty much in full swing, but personally, I had managed to separate myself from the emotions tied to the pandemic. I was struggling with something different: several months prior, I had had a pretty hard time leaving Alabama and some of the best friends I have ever had. (To be clear, I often talk about my best friends – I have a lot of them. I’m a state-hopping fiend, remember? They come from all walks of my life and I love them all dearly.) The pandemic had changed the end of our fellowship quite dramatically, and for the first time in my life, I had experienced a heartbreaking loss. I didn’t know you could be heartbroken over leaving a place – I suppose this is what they call homesick – but something I later realized was that I was well and truly heartbroken over leaving Greensboro. I suppose when you give literally everything you have, and then one day you just don’t have it anymore, feelings of loss, anguish, grief, and pain set in.
Beyond feeling a loss, I felt lost, but simultaneously as if I was seeking, searching, for something. For a while I was confused, too – was I still a happy person? I spent so much time in my own head wondering and worrying. Yet, so many people still told me how they appreciated my energy, my joy, my zest for life – because I was always on an adventure. In fact, I spent most weekends of that first fall semester at Georgia hiking different parts of the Appalachian mountains.
When I was little, I told people I wanted to go to college out east, solely because I wanted to hike these mountains. Then, when I first moved, I told myself, “Life is too short, I have a car, what are you waiting for?”
But you know what? I was running away: from grief, from loss. If I was moving (up a mountain at a breakneck speed) there wasn’t time to think. If I was always on an adventure, I could write it off as a bit of planned spontaneity, a zest for “life is too short!” and “no regrets!” It was an attempt to sweat out the feelings I think we are so often told to shove away – and then I wouldn’t even have to process them.
But I learned it doesn’t work like that.
In fact, running away certainly will not solve your problems, or at least, it didn’t for me, but it may help you find what you’re chasing, seeking, and yearning.
It’s interesting. When you leave a place – Greensboro – you can’t really do anything. When I left Alabama, my time there was just simply done. Sure, I could go back and visit, and I have, many times, but it wouldn’t be the same. My job was done. There was an element of finiteness to it. I had a reason for accepting the loss. But when a place is associated with a loss of the presence of friends and family, too, I think that hits a bit differently, harder. Phone calls, emails, and letters are certainly instant gratifiers, but friends and families tied to experiences so incredibly intertwined with the tangibility of fully living in the moment are difficult to leave behind.
In hindsight, I think my mountain escapades were dangerous. I never wanted to work through my emotions lest I lose the zeal I had for everyday life. For most of my life, I found it easy to offer up a smile – because I had not experienced any big sort of loss. Well and truly, I’m not sure the above is an earth-shattering loss, but that period in my life was fraught with more distress than I had previously handled. And it was hard. For a long time, I was hard on myself.
“Why can’t you just let go?”
Because emotions can be tiny monsters. They can also be an extraordinary gift, but they are also monstrous. They do not care who you normally are, that they are unfamiliar, that time – and not running away to the mountains – is really the only cure. You see, I think when we experience these things, the most dangerous thing we can do is to displace these emotions without a will to heal. Our world wreaks of messaging that tells us to suck it up and go. That if you just do this one thing, you’ll be great. That you shouldn’t show your pain.
I call bullshit.
Embrace those feelings. Love those feelings. Work through those feelings. Feel so entirely you, you begin to understand them. Fully and wholeheartedly. They will change, but if you aren’t there to catch the change, to see the change, to comprehend the change, you’re missing out.
I lived alone for most of this period I found myself missing Greensboro and my friends the most. Each day was full of people, classwork, and research, but when I came home, I was alone. I was also lonely. And if you haven’t heard, there’s a difference. I am talker and a sharer, but I found it hard to share the full extent of these feelings. I certainly talked about it at length with many of my friends, but I think the mountains saw more of the full spectrum of my emotions than anyone else. So I was lonely because I felt bound to my emotions, but I perpetuated them by chasing adventure alone.
Then, one day, I felt free, light, like those beautiful, puffy, white clouds lazing about the bright blue sky on a serene summer day. The sad days still came, but my mind was amazingly still – like when you get to the top of the less traveled mountain and gape in awe at the clarity and stillness that exists around you.
Once I finally found myself with this clear mind, I found my loneliness drifting away. There were many days when I still felt alone in my apartment – because I was – but that’s where it ended.
I started to reframe and rethink my aloneness. Being and living alone, especially as a young 20-something, was difficult. But it was invigorating. I, for once in my life, could be so entirely selfish and not care one whit. Because here’s the thing – there was never a need to feel selfish. There was no one waiting on me, expecting me, wondering about me. So, I had no reason to incur or stew in guilt about letting someone down, about not meeting someone’s, other than my own, expectations. It truly was a liberating lifestyle. I could do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I learned that though I love, cherish, and am very grateful for people, I could live by myself if I needed. And that was an important lesson.
The day we give up on ourselves being the leader of our own life is a sad day.
I know some days can be really, really hard. And if you are reading this right now and thinking, “yes, yes I know,” then I know, too, and I empathize with you. And I won’t tell you time heals all – though it does – but I will tell you that I need you to never, ever give up on you. Because when you, too, find what it is you’re running after, and you remember all the beautiful things about life, it will be a good day.
In the meantime,
dance to the beat of your own music –
with wild and reckless abandon –
even if no one else is.
And when you feel well and truly alive, smile, just because.
Embrace it, and don’t let go.
ON HAPPINESS 