My youthful arrogance and naivete has led me to believe that I’ve experienced true happiness.  High points in romances, wild streaks of partying, and validation by mere spectators, I thought brought me “happiness.”   But in my year and a half of single-hood, I’ve learned that I actually knew very little about happiness, and have mistaken it for comfort and compensation (by the way, key ingredients for sabotage).  Today, without a man who can lovingly distract me from my boredom, loneliness, and demons, I got caught up in a very complicated relationship with myself.

It’s all recently climaxed since life’s tempo transitioned from allegro to largo in a matter of two months.  Friends are expecting babies, completing final exams, traveling abroad, and rightfully attending to their busy lives.  I love them for all of this.  But this quite period that has left me spending more time with myself than ever before, with little room for comfort or compensation…

Because I’m such a social addict, I struggle with this kind of stillness.  But, it’s these kinds of rare circumstances that are forcing me to love my own company for no reason at all.  I sit for hours at a coffee sifting through pages and feeling entirely productive.  Most of all, I’m listening to my erratic thoughts without anxiety, resistance, or apology.  And the result of this phenomenal process is that I’m slowly submitting to ease and acceptance of myself.

This is not a simple time for me, but I’m grateful to reside (once again) outside the comfort zone…the only place on earth one can grow.  In this case, I’ve realized something about “happiness,” which is that it’s completely irrelevant to living a wholesome life.  If life is a series of relationships with friends, family, a partner, and the world at large…how can can we possibly succeed in them without mastering a relationship with ourselves first?  And if in fact relationships are just a spitting image of our inner selves, it’s not ambiguous happiness that I’m chasing, but rather a relationship based on…well…sheer ease and acceptance.