I can’t sleep.

I had a few thoughts monkeying around my head, so I thought I would make a pot of coffee and write.

As Michael and I continue to settle on our property while he builds our dome home, I think about what it means to be happy.

My journey into and across adulthood has had many challenges as I searched for happiness, my authentic truth.

As a deep thinker, someone who looks within, I seem to be peeling back another “onion” layer of happiness.

This happiness feels unfamiliar.

Unfamiliar happiness because it’s missing decades-of-chaos.

This decades-of-chaos is struggling with mental health mis-diagnoses, alcoholism and feeling safe in my environment and in my own skin.

Now, living on our property I feel safe, have proper mental health diagnoses and am an active 12-Step participant.

I feel comfortable in my skin.

I feel happy.

I feel extraordinarily happy.

One of my diagnoses is Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). I feel emotions intensely and they can take longer to pass. Hours, sometimes days.

BPD is often misdiagnosed for Bipolar Disorder (BD).

BPD emotional highs and lows seem excessive; so much so, before proper diagnoses, Michael sometimes commented how my mood swings seemed bipolar.

I bring this up to explain how powerful this unfamiliar happiness feels within me.

Even deeper within the metaphorical onion layers of self, this is a happiness that has lowered the volume on the familiar chaos of abandonment fears and/or am-not-doing-enough guilt voices within my head.

This robust, unfamiliar happiness feels:

Creative.

Energizing.

Expansive.

Peaceful.

It’s as if I’m BPD vibrating with it.

This March Break allows me freedom to be outside, cleaning and clearing our land.

Connecting with it. Taking it all in. Resting. Relaxing. Cooking. Creating.

Spending time with Michael as we work together and hang out, together.

Playing with our dogs. Spending time with them outside, where they love to play and run.

I can do what I want rather than what I feel I “should” do.

A pressure seems to be lifting from my shoulders.

It’s almost as if I can breathe, deeply…slowly letting go of cognitive burdens I no longer need to cling to.

S, 🌻

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