Delicious Ambiguity

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. - Gilda Radner

I wanted the perfect ending too. I wanted to have the perfect life. I wanted others to envy my life like I envied theirs. I was jealous of the happiness that seemed to be everywhere but in my soul. So I mimicked. I tried to replicate what I saw others doing. But no matter how I succeeded in following the paint-by-numbers direction, no matter how ‘beautiful’ I made it all appear, I was not having the perfect life nor the perfect ending. The happiness eluded me. And I cried, quietly and softly, inside for years. With every attempt to renovate failing though, my tears got less and less and resignation set in. My heart’s desire to be happy extinguished. No use continuing to try to appear perfect or to strive for that perfect ending I saw everyone else having. Life for me was always going to be gray with the occasional fleeting bursts of sunshine. Because no matter how hard I tried it wasn’t working. Why were others happy and I wasn’t?

My first memory of trying to manufacture or manipulate happiness was back in high school, I successfully stepped in and filled the shoes of a beloved classmate whom everyone loved. She had it all, I thought. She was blonde. Vivacious, outgoing, happy. She made you feel that the moments she spent with you were as valuable to her as it was to you. I wanted to be her. So when she moved, I did all the things that she did. I did the same activities. I even ran the same sport in track. And it worked. At the end of the next year, a boy, whom I had a crush on, commented to me that I reminded him of her. And I was thrilled but also sad because even though I had succeeded in becoming LIKE her. I still was NOT her. And I NEVER would be. I would always be Michelle. I couldn’t ever be anyone different. So I decided that I wanted people to like ME for who I was not for whom I made them think about.

(You might think that was the only lesson I needed to learn about manufacturing happiness. But no, I need multiple lessons before brilliance sets in.)

So for the next 20 years I didn’t try to be anyone but myself. BUT I followed the instructions laid out for me by many previous generations and influences in my life. I tried to amass those things that were necessary to make me happy to give me the perfect life, the perfect ending. Where people could look at my family’s photo and think, “Wow. What a great looking family! They look so happy!” I graduated high school (with grand hopes for my future), went to college on scholarship (still hopeful), got married (cause that’s what you did and everyone else was doing it and they seemed happy), went to graduate school on scholarship (having multiple degrees means you’re smart which if you’re smart, you have to be happy), had one baby (because people who were happy had children), started creating my career path (earning money naturally makes you happy) , bought a house (a mortgage means you are grown up and grown ups are happy), had another baby (mothers with multiple children are, naturally, happier than those with just one), got another job (earning more money had to bring me happiness), bought a bigger house (I had to live on this one particular street because every time I walked on it, everyone there seemed so happy), got a dog (pets are important for happiness, I read it in a magazine.), got laid off (oh wait, what about the money equaling happiness part?), saw less and less of my husband (oh wait, I’m raising two kids basically on my own. I’m still not feeling happy and now I’m getting angry), got another job but on a different career path (I could make everything right again if I were employed; life would have to get easier and happiness would then come), had another baby (another child would be the perfect antidote to the misery that was enveloping my life; the child would make me happy), and I began screaming and raging inside because my ‘perfect life’ was far from it and I didn’t want that ‘perfect life’. Happiness had eluded me at every turn and at every attempt so far. I woke up from my years of resignation and knew there had to be more to life than I was getting. And I was determined to change my path. My perfect ending, my perfect life was not what anyone else could describe or plan out for me. It was inside me the whole time. I had just been afraid of living it. I didn’t know where it was going to take me but I knew that it was going to be perfect… for me.