I am the Skeleton in the Closet

Unexpected

I've always dreamed of being happy. Having all my problems blow away with the wind and being truly happy. Unfortunately, this is not a happy tale, not for the faint of heart, nor for those wishing to escape from the reality they're so desperately avoiding; but it's the reality I lived nonetheless. Struggling through the years, it's not a story I particularly enjoy remembering. Still yet, it is a piece of me. A part of my soul and try as I might, there is nothing that can be done about it, except to look to the future. So, if the story is better to be left under the rug why should I explain. Is this book to be about how to pretend? Everything is fine, even when it's obviously not. A smile can do wonders! I could shout to disbelieving ears with a grin wider than my cheeks and a waning light shining through my eyes. Knowing all of the reasons to frown and driving myself crazy attempting to ignore them. Could I be happy that way? I've always wanted to be happy.

I could write about a testament towards revenge. Isn't it sweet? Shouldn't I want it? The downfall of those who caused me this pain in trade for a happiness of their own. A happiness they refused to share and a happiness I knew not how to attain. Yet, how hypocritical would it be for me to gather this feeling to myself, knowing that they had done the same? Would that not then make it their right to do just as such in retaliation? I'm sure it was not intentional. With the wool over their eyes they acted accordingly. Blindly stumbling, tripping others to find their path. True happiness, it's what we all search for; but who's to say that in their stumbling rage they chose the correct way? Tripping over the ones they pushed down got them turned around, sideways, and backwards. Seeing another battling their uphill dreams they assumed it was right to do so. Knocking people left and right, but battles are battles because of adversity. The goal is not to create an assailant of your own, but to come across them naturally, and to act accordingly from there.

I could always forget. Stuff every persona I've killed in my pursuit of my dream deep in the back of my closet. It didn't happen. I couldn't have happened. I'd rather not dwell I could decide. Labeling the wardrobe and assigning it the task of dwelling for me. Never to be opened. Forgetting parts of myself in the process. Closing the door and locking it away, I'd never have to feel that pain again. I could be free in this world, tiptoeing about at surface level and never taking the plunge. Of course the issue with this comes to bite when I find the need to kill off another piece of me. Pulling out the skeleton that regrew in my body that had threatened to drag me into the abyss of depressive thought I attempt to stuff it in the locked box only to have each of my other selves fall out onto me. It's in this way that I could drown in all of the things that I wish I could have forgotten. Not realizing that by locking them away I created a space where they all reside. A space lying just below my subconscious. I've found that deciding not to think about it is thinking about it all the same.

So what then? If things cannot be forgotten, revenge is against moral bounds to seek, and pretending is found to be counter intuitive, how could I ever hope to achieve it? The feeling of pure unadulterated happiness. Something you can't find bottled, no amount of money could possibly purchase it for long, and what happens when I find it. Well, if, if I find it. What could I do then? What would I do then...

It's not my job to know, or to tell you exactly how it can be found. I believe that everyone has to go through a certain amount of turmoil to come close to it. An amount of demons must be faced before you can bask in the glow created by the bright shining smile that will naturally cross your face once you find it. It's not a feeling you can fake, but you'll know it when it comes. For most of our lives it creeps up and for a few fleeting moments, everything seems right in the world. The hard part is getting it to stay.

It's always been a dream of mine to be happy. By the end of this book I'd like to claim to have come close. If not having obtained it in its entirety. As you read you'll find portions that make you want to stop but I encourage you to continue. It is my hope that in reading my tale you'll come to the same realization I have, and what is that? Well, there's no real way to paraphrase, but as with many tales of woe it began at an early age, and early age with an early hindrance.