What’s this? A Post in the *morning* from Jady? How did you get to be so lucky, loyal reader??

Well, work doesn’t start until 11am, and I sure as hell didn’t wake up early to exercise, so you get a dose of writing and musings early today. Count your lucky stars. Or roll your eyes at me when I say I’m tired and yet insist on waking up long before I have to go to the office. Either way. Your call.

I had one of those routine, totally normal, existential crises last night. I wept like a small child recounting regretful choices and lamentable circumstances; things I cannot change bubbled over in my brain and came out my eye sockets. During, it felt pretty damn hopeless and terrible. Afterward, I slept like that self-same little child, and let that be a good reminder to you, loyal reader, that bottling things is stupid and letting yourself feel feelings is the coolest way to live.

Wanting someone to be happy is an interesting concept to me. We all do it, surely. Happiness is an elemental desire for Americans, although it’s something I’ve always mistaken myself into thinking I had obtained, only to look back and, yikes, I wasn’t happy so much as pretty damn miserable if not both. DBT, a modality that gave me great coping skills post-hospitalization, is in essence a study in duality…things that seem totally counter to one another can in fact exist at the same time. You can be with friends and lonely as hell. You can be miserable and happy. You can enjoy your circumstances and yet wish for so much more. Acceptance of both things, black and white, allows you to exist in the gray area of which so much life is comprised. Finding comfort in both sides of things brings peace, and lessens distress. Peace sometimes even leads to moments of happiness. 

So is happiness a moment of time, a state of mind, an outlook? I’m not sure I know. I do know that happiness appears to me more often post-divorce than it did during the breakup, which seems pretty obvious looking back. I know that when I invest in my best of friends, I feel a certain sort of warmth that I associate with being happy, even when they’re the ones with windfalls and life-boons, not me directly. I’m aware that when I do use DBT skills to find peace in the ever-changing and mercurial nature of my life, I feel contentment that blossoms into sunny little slivers of happiness on even the bleakest day. I know when I have a good cry, like last night, I sleep better and wake up feeling a strange sort of accomplishment that I felt feelings and endured.

Back to reality: get ready for work and take the time to do my makeup and wear something cute (armor, dear reader), work today from 11am-9pm; teaching Parenting class tonight and going through my extensive discharge list to get a few people off the roster, catching up with trainings in powerpoint slides that may or may not be boring as hell (but necessary), maintaining my budget by NOT eating out and instead using the salad fixings I got yesterday to eat from the office as per my resolution, go home and sort through laundry to make certain my cutest possible clothing is clean and ready for my weekend trip to VEGAS, touch base with a few friends and family, maintain sanity, etc.

This blogging in the morning thing is actually quite handy for getting myself on track. Hmm. Let’s see if it becomes a habit. Don’t hold your breath.