of all the things i fear...

my friend diane pointed something out to me once, and it seems valid.
i'm afraid of my own happiness.

this, however, is not without cause, or even justifiable excuse.

in the absense of happiness, there is more room for hope. the more miserable one is, the more their life can only improve. when you're at the bottom, or seem to be at least, you are secure in the confidence that it can't get any worse, and that the longer things remain poor, the better your odds become that things will be better tomorrow than they are today.

this, however, is not true of happiness.

instead, when there is an abundance of happiness, there is the prospect of loss. there is the fear that at some point, this newfound joy will disappear. the odds that were working for you when you were miserable now work against you, telling you that it can't last forever, that balance must be, at some point in the future, restored.

and then, there is a new component that, in the wake of happiness, leaves you not only with the feelings themselves, but the new void, the lack, that comes from missing the happiness you lost.

in a smaller, less significant way, it's a little like a child living in a third-world country. if you're born there, you honestly don't know, a lot of the time, how completely miserable your life is. you know it's hard, and you know that you cry sometimes, and you know that you're tired, but without the basis for any kind of comparison, you don't really have any idea, and because it's your only reality, the only one with which you are and likely ever will be familiar, you simply accept it as the way the world is.
if, however, you were to be suddenly transported to canada, and integrated in a canadian foster home for a few months, maybe a year, whatever... suddenly, you'd be aware of so much more. and, don't get me wrong, the place you came from would definitely increase your gratitude for the place in which you find yourself. but with that gratitude would come, i'm almost certain, a strong lack of desire to return to your origins.
now, at that point, we take you and ship you back, and you resume your life as it was. instead of having food all the time, you're starving again. instead of an allowance, you're back rooting through the dump for things you can either eat or sell. instaed of the nikes and the gap jeans, you're back in rags. instead of comforters and mattresses, you're sleeping on a dirt floor covered with bugs.
when you wake up in the morning, walk however many miles you have to in bare feet, getting dizzy from the heat and the exertion, i bet there'd be some bitterness. because now you know how other people have it. that's how people in this country, despite being in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, can still be miserable... because we're so aware of all those out there who have it better and don't deserve it. it would have been better to never have been brought here at all, rather than to be introduced to an incredible life and then returned to a place where that life is no longer even a remote possibility.

anyway, what i'm trying to do, i guess, is find a way around all of this. a way to have good feelings without being terrified that they're going to go away at some point in the near future. a way to have good things without feeling a subconcious need to sabbotage them just to restore a life that's understandable. happiness should not be a synonym for anxiety.

but it is.