Because I'm happy?

I woke up crying again this morning. This is not the first time this has happened and I guarantee it will not be the last. As I lay in bed, unable to sleep, and unable to make the dark thoughts leave my consciousness one question floated by somewhere from the recesses of my mind, faint at first and then louder until it was all I could think.

Have I ever been happy?

The answer is most assuredly yes, right? It has to be yes. I grew up in a beautiful town, surrounded by loving people and was always encouraged to follow my passions. I must have been happy at some point. And even now, I have pursued a career in what I love, surely this must bring me joy. Rationally and logically I would have to say that yes, definitively, I have been happy at many points in my life.

Here's the rub though...emotions aren't rational and they aren't logical and they can consume your mind the way a spider consumes a fly. Picture it: Your emotional well being is kinda like that fly, alive, free, flying wherever it wants and sadness is the web. When first caught you will continue to flap your wings, pulling from the trap, attempting to free yourself but the more your struggle, the more you fight, the more the web closes in on you, the closer the spider gets until you are stuck in a web, wondering how you got there in the first place and if or how you'll ever get out.

As I lay in bed, tears streaming down my face, my mind wanders to the zoo. Odd, at a time like this, that I would think about the zoo. I think about the animals there, caged, set to routine, in some cases alone, far from home and I realize why they have come into my thoughts. My life, in many ways, mirrors that feeling. My life has become a zoo and I am an animal in a cage. Again, when speaking rationally, I know that I am free and I am extremely grateful for the freedom that I have based on many factors bestowed at birth. Here is where the irrationality of sadness rears it's ugly head again. I awake to routine, I eat at pre-determined times, I sleep far more than I should or not at all, I have lost the drive to breed. Just like a resident at the zoo I have become caged by my emotions. Unable to change the situation, I have succumbed to it.

And there is that nagging question again...have I ever been happy?

There is guilt that comes with this question. I love my husband with what feels like the entirety of my being. I know he tries his hardest to make me feel better when I am sad. I love my parents who have done nothing but tried to make a life for me that they knew was worth living. I love my friends and colleagues. I would do nearly anything for them and many of them have come to my rescue when I needed it most. This isn't about the amount of love in my heart...it's about that damn spider...that chokes off that love...that keeps my mind in a place where I am incapable of feeling anything but numbness. Numbness or anger. Anger at myself for not being able to shake this feeling. Anger at others for not seeing me here, trapped in this web, twisting in the wind. And there it is again...guilt...because I shouldn't be angry at anything but my own body chemistry. This is a physical problem and, as such, shouldn't there be a concrete physical answer? Yet again logic and emotion collide and the web closes in. I remind myself that happiness is not quantifiable. This ever present question of happiness may not be answerable...

Then another question sails by on wave of thought, fleeting and strange...am I going to make it?

The most honest answer I can give? God do I want to.

I want to be the fly that breaks the web.
I want to be the caged bird that sings.
I want to be the woman who finally concurs the underlying, lifelong issues.

And there it stands...I want to be. No matter how bad it seems or how bad it gets:

I. want. to be.

I am...