how strange it is to be anything at all

What's the point in anything? What do you really want? Lately I've been trying to answer these questions for myself. For so long all I wanted was some kind of contentment with my life, I was certain there was no hope for that here. I believed that my happiness could be found somewhere else far away from home and from everything I've ever known. I left and found that wasn't true at all. I moved, came back, and went through a stage of deep depression. I couldn't find a reason to stay alive anymore, I was completely lost. I had lived eighteen years thinking I'd find happiness in a one way ticket and then realized that wasn't how it worked.

I went through a unique phase of my life after coming back, I found that my leaving had a purpose. I was never truly ready to leave in the first place and now I had a new found love for my hometown. The next year that followed after my return was an incredible journey of self-discovery.  I made new friends, lost friends, fell in love, fell out of love, went through heartbreak, suffered from bouts of uncontrollable sadness to the point that I went to the hospital and spent a week in intensive therapy. All during which I questioned the point of everything, what's the point in any of this? What's the purpose in this pain?

We set out on a voyage even when we're so young as children to figure out the reason for our existence. We're asked what we want to be when we grow up, where we want to live, how many kids we want, if we want to get married when we're older, etc., etc. We're taught that that's our purpose, that we need to go to college, get 'real' jobs and then find our soul mate, get married, and have children of our own who will then set out to do all of the same. But in the midst of it all, no one teaches us about happiness.

Rarely does anyone ask us when we're kids what makes us happy, rarely at all does anyone ask anyone what makes them happy. Everyone is so set on doing what they think they need to instead of living and discovering their own purpose. What's so crazy is we can do whatever we want to, it's like your parents always told you, you can do whatever you set your mind to, its just that no one ever really does. Instead, being creatures of comfort, we think of the most successful job we're capable of attaining, the job that will make us the most money so we can be at what we think will be 'ease' but it never lasts long.

What if life isn't all about comfort and doing what everyone else is doing? We go through all of this pain and what for? Just to continue to be unhappy? Life is so simple but it's so hard. We're all on our own trip, figuring it out, trying to grasp the point of our existence. Maybe we'll never really understand it but the moments I live for are the ones where even for just a little bit I feel that I suddenly get why life is worth living.

Happiness will never be something that happens overnight, it's not found in simply moving or finding love. It's something that you have to go through on your own, it's learning self-acceptance, passion, it's seeing the world we live in. It's something easy that takes its time.