The Key to Happiness

You (my teacher) said that the key to happiness was learning to play: by exploring the environment and experiencing real life rather than watching television and playing video games.

Well, what if you’re so depressed that you can’t leave the house, let alone get out of bed. What if I told you that every time I looked in the mirror, or caught a glimpse of myself out of the corner of my eye, I wanted to throw up. What if I said that every time I tried to get better, I only got worse because the problem wasn’t in my head. It was me. I was the problem. I hated myself.

Everyday that goes by, I feel a sense of relief. Slowly, I can feel this awful hatred lifting. This is true happiness for me: being able to get up in the morning, being able to see a future for myself, simply being able to walk outside without immediately feeling sick.

For seventeen years, I lived a lie that I thought I could handle. I tried to fit in, I tried to do what I wanted and ignore the bigger issue. Some things worked as a quick fix, a small burst of dopamine. This worked for 17 years. The longer this went on, the more I needed to feel alive. Life was fine when I was a kid.

I came from a decent home, where my parents were together and loved each other, where I could be whoever I wanted as long as I was their baby girl. I was fine with this. I could be their girl as long as I kept getting that dopamine from doing whatever I needed. This worked until about the age of 12, otherwise known as puberty. This began a deep and long depression that would last almost six years. I didn’t know what I was sad about, I didn’t know why I wanted to fucking die.

By the time I was 14, I thought it would be okay. I had started high school, and I made some new friends who accepted me, the same friends who I first told my secret to a few years later. By 15, I knew I couldn’t do it any longer. I started cutting myself, I started taking pills to make myself feel numb because anything was better than this, I began smoking weed, drinking until I threw up, and doing anything I could to hurt myself that wasn’t visible to others. By this time, I knew something was wrong. I knew I wasn’t right. I promised myself I wouldn’t live to see 16.

I don’t know why I stuck around, but I did. I didn’t know it then but these next two years would be the worst so far. Last summer, at the age of 17, I got so sick I self-admitted into the psychiatric ward at the hospital, maybe one of the worst decisions I have ever made. I was full of hate and anger. I had so much self-hatred that I blatantly ignored the problem. I knew I wasn’t who I was supposed to be and I was punishing myself. It took me three more months to come to terms with my feelings, to admit it to myself.

This was the summer my entire life changed. It was so incredibly painful, but if I had not gone through any of this pain I wouldn’t be able to be here today, feeling a sense of true happiness, not the fabricated feelings of pleasure that I got from drugs, drinking, sex, and self-harm.

When I got out of the hospital there seemed to be more problems. My parents were treating me like I was crazy, like if they said one wrong thing I would fly off the handle. My entire family was too involved, trying to tell me to just be happy. Telling me it was in my head and that I could beat it and be happy like I used to be. They all wanted their little girl back. This was the summer that she died. I had tortured her enough. She was begging.

This was the summer that she had had enough, I became homeless because despite my family's best efforts to make me feel better, trying to fix me, I feel they only made it worse. I ended up in "The Haven," the irony in this name only evident to me. This place was awful. Not the people, not the rules, nothing about the actual institution was bad. I was. I left within two weeks. I went between three places in the span of two months, ending up living with my girlfriend. That lasted seven months, but it became home to me. It was stable. I felt okay there because I was with the one person who didn’t give a shit about who I was or wanted to be. But I still couldn’t tell her, couldn’t tell myself yet.

October 2016, I slowly began to start to admit it.

November 2016, I told my best friend in Alberta. I needed her help. I didn’t know how to tell Cal. When it came down to it, I couldn’t say it out loud. It hurt to hear. Through my blurry vision I opened my phone and I texted her ten simple words that changed my entire life. “I don't think I want to be a girl anymore.”

Fast forward one year. If you asked I would say I’m pretty happy. I’m still working a lot of things out but I can feel it. Every day seems to be easier. I still get those days where I feel like I am starting all over again, but days that are good, are so fucking good. I’ve only been on Hormone Replacement Therapy for three months. Not much has changed, but if you just listen to me on a daily basis, every day I speak more. It doesn’t hurt to hear my own voice anymore. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone else, but I enjoy watching myself change, seeing the hair growth on my legs, my hands getting rougher. Every little part of this is actually enjoyable.

If you asked me not even two years ago, I would have told you that happiness comes from pleasure, that rush of dopamine in the moment when you know you’re doing something fucked up, that moment when you’re heart rate speeds up when you take that line of MDMA, or that time you get so drunk you can’t remember it the next morning.

But that isn’t it. It’s self-love. It’s being able to look in the mirror in the morning and not want to punch your own reflection. Happiness is that simple for me.

I am perfectly happy for the first time in my life and it is the biggest rush of pleasure I have ever felt. No drug could ever replicate the high that I feel every day by just being me.