About Happiness

Re-establishing my ability to enjoy life turned out to be a journey on its own filled with contradicting emotions and ideas. My list below is a random mixture of my thoughts and feelings about finding personal happiness in my world without Daniel.

• To be happy is not as easy and clear as it was before Daniel died, it has become a complex, confusing and often impossible emotion. It feels completely wrong to be happy but it is still so essential to my well being.
   
• I am aware that it is very normal for bereaved parents to feel guilty whenever they feel happy and I know all the reasons why to release the guilt but I cannot overcome the strong sense inside me that any happiness in my life will reduces from the severity of the tragedy caused by Daniel’s drowning. It feels as if my sadness is testimonial to the depth of my loss and that the only way to stay loyal to the love I have for Daniel would be to continue to mourn his death.
   
• It is okay with me that it will be a different happiness that I will find because regardless of what good fortune may cross my path, I will never feel so resolved and deeply content as I felt while I shared my life with Daniel.
   
• There was something unique and very special about Daniel’s love and I will never be able to put to words how it really was with Daniel and how it really is without him. Whenever I talk with Henry and Alecia about Daniel, we always say that no one but us will ever completely understand how broken we are. Daniel was far far more than just my child or their baby brother. He was our world and centre of our happy togetherness as a family.
   
• On the day of Daniel’s funeral I made a promise to myself that I will do my best to live what is left of my life as happy as I could possibly be and that I promised that I would not allow sorrow to destroy me. At the time, I was in such a deep state of shock that it felt quite possible and achievable. As the disbelief and initial devastation subsided to make place for the reality I often doubt my ability to fulfill this promise.

I reached a point some time ago when I felt emotionally and physically weak, exhausted from crying, from not sleeping and from trying not to give in to the darkness of my sorrow. My sadness was suffocating me and I felt as if I was slowly dying and as desperately as I wanted to walk this road without any medication I realized that I had no choice. So I have been taking anti-depressants for about a month.

This is not something I find easy to talk about and I am in two minds about sharing this here on my blog put in the end it is part of my story and as long as I am drinking these pills it will change the context of whatever I experience. Again it feels wrong that I am taking medication to suppress my true emotions of despair and desolation.

I wonder if we as humans have the right to alter the natural course of our emotions and the way our bodies respond to it. Is if this medical intervention not a form of self betrayal, betrayal of Daniel and ultimately of my Universal path? And how much of whatever happiness I experience is artificial and how much of it real?

Then last Tuesday afternoon happened and I didn’t care much about all these unanswered question in my head and for a while the world felt just fine…see, I love to dance, more than almost anything else.The music and the movement fill me with pleasure and an enjoyment of life, but not since Daniel died.

I was not sure if I would ever be able to dance again but there it happened, I danced my heart out

Unplanned, just with a friend, on a Tuesday afternoon in Hamburg. We were talking and listening to cool music when I asked him if he would mind if I dance a bit, just there in the room. I thought if might be difficult but I just closed my eyes and I danced and danced and danced.

I danced feeling free without guilt or sadness I still carry with me the warm feelings of happiness, healing and a renewed awareness of Daniel’s presence in my life.