So, I figured out how to be happy. Life must be smooth sailing from now on, right? Well, it’s never really that simple. Knowing how to be happy or what makes me happy doesn’t make me happy, it doesn’t even ensure that I do the things that make me happy. How funny is that?
The problem is, knowing what makes us happy doesn’t really make us happy in itself, right? I might know that I feel happier not eating junk food because it makes me feel physically nauseous and even a bit sad afterwards, but I still go for that junk food some days. I am perfectly aware that exercising every day makes me happier and that I always feel bad when I don’t exercise, but some days I just can’t be bothered for whatever reason.
Sometimes, even knowing something is a mistake before doing it, I still end up doing it and then feeling like an idiot afterwards because I knew I was making a mistake.
Some days I don’t play guitar even though practising truly makes me happier the entire day.
What makes us happy is doing whatever makes us happy; whether that is going for that healthy meal or exercising or playing guitar. It’s about prioritising doing what makes us feel better, not just short-term, but also long-term as well. Balancing the two is a challenge, but it has to be possible.
Life is, in my opinion, nothing but a bunch of choices and our happiness depends on our ability to navigate those choices.
It may sound simple, but in reality I doubt anything more difficult really exist.
So, my biggest challenge right now is accepting that I don’t have the past that I wish I had. In a way, what I want is a paradox. I want to be who I am now and have my own past just like it was, but… at the same time, I want to have been happy. I want to have been happy most of my life.
I can’t have both, though. I can’t be where I am now and have had a happy past. I am not saying my life was horrible, but I wasn’t happy for most of it and because of that, the happiness I feel now is so much more dear to me. I understand myself in some odd fundamental way, even though I am not sure who I am if I have to give you a summary or describe myself somehow.
My past isn’t like I wanted. It was strange to realise that it’s not just that I am not where I wanted to be originally, but also that I didn’t live life in the way I wanted to. I somehow had this desire to change my own past, something that is clearly impossible for many reasons, not only the major reason I would never even be able to fool myself into thinking my past was any different; that is, if my past was different my present moment would be different too.
Well, accepting my past is necessary, I think. I don’t know how to do that, however. Accepting that I am not where I wanted to be was painful and seemed impossible at first, but I did get through it mainly because I can change my present and my future. What I do today can affect everything I do for the rest of my life. It gave me a sense of strength and hope to understand this and I have now started to create the life that I want now. Not the life I wanted or thought I would have, but the life that makes me happiest now and in my immediate future. I am choosing my present and my future and working as hard as I can to make my life what I want and need, so that I can feel better about myself and my life.
I can’t do that with my past. It can’t be changed. There is no hope, because it is all over – it’s just something that happened once and yet, it influences my sense of self, my confidence and my hopes. Why does something that have to affect us so much, when it is almost like it doesn’t exist if we can simply forget about it?
My grandmother had Alzheimer’s before she passed away and watching the illness progress was painful and yet, in some ways, beautiful. You see, she had some very traumatic experiences in her life and was for some reason given a drug back in the 60s. I won’t go into specifics, but the main point is that the side effects of this drug were severe and many people were given it without knowing the consequences. She was medicated for many years, since the drug was highly addictive and it was close to impossible to get her off it again. Later on, she struggled with this addiction on her own while getting her supply from different sources. It affected her personality and her mood and she was, as far as I can remember, fighting depression for as long as I can remember.
We talked a lot before she got Alzheimer’s because she lived with my mother and me while I grew up and that made us close. I knew her pain, and yet, I never confronted her about it or did anything to help her. I was in too much pain myself and because our traumas were in some ways similar, we understood each other, I think. I guess, because I never asked her, I will never know.
She was a wonderful human being, in spite of all her pain and anger and frustration. I have said this before, but I don’t think she was ever truly happy unless she was sat at a piano playing her heart out. When she played, that was when you were given a glimpse into her pain, a window into her own past.
As the years passed her Alzheimer’s became worse. In the beginning she was angry and sad. She once sat with me, crying like a little child, holding on to me while asking me to help her kill herself. I have no doubt how she wanted to die, the fear that possessed her heart and soul in those days. She didn’t just forget people and past hurts, she forgot all that made her happy – she forgot how to play the piano. She was terrified and I completely understand her. I would be too. Needless to say, I didn’t help her end her life, but instead helped her make it through one more day every day I had the chance. She survived many more years after that afternoon and I am so very grateful that she did.
Then, there was a period with what I call blind spots. She would be sort of okay for a long time and then she would have this blind spot. A moment where she would just sort of disappear. She would have these moments more and more often until she barely had clear moments anymore.
At first she would just forget everyday things like we all do, but more and more and she wasn’t aware of it. Then, it got worse. It was like she wasn’t there for a few moments and she did something like putting plastic in the oven or put out a cigarette in tissue paper. She did things like eat stuff that wasn’t edible or spit out things she didn’t like in the same way a child might. She was there and then she was gone only to return again a little later. The blind spots were frightening because it was like I was standing in front of a stranger and she was seeing a stranger as well, but we weren’t. We were family and I was somehow supposed to help her. But how do two strangers feel enough trust to help or be allowed to help?
As she got worse however, some of the initial frustration and anger slowly started to disappear. In time, it went away completely. All the fear she had held on to her entire life, the drug addiction she had struggled with (and in my opinion had defeated before the illness took hold of her), the pain and traumas, her smoking habit – everything simple seemed to disappear one by one. Why? She forgot.
Her body still remembered somehow, but her mind was cleared of all those things. I know her body remembered, because she did things like move her hands up to her mouth like she was holding an invisible cigarette and smoke, but she herself had forgotten and barely paid it any attention. She remembered who she loved, showing an unlimited and unrestrained deep love for her son – a son whom she had struggled to maintain a good relationship with in spite of both their efforts. I understand, because my grandmother was undiagnosed autistic and I could see myself in her more than anyone else – especially in the struggle to show affection towards others. But, once her memories were gone, only her loving heart remained and since she had no fears holding her back, she showed that loved in the purest form you can – like a small and innocent child.
My grandmother was a strong woman, a demanding woman and a deeply hurt woman. She fell in love, after she and my grandfather had divorced, with a much younger man. Because of society, but I think more likely out of fear, she left him and the scar of choosing not to pursue love marked her in different ways too. It was as if she isolated herself from any risk of pain again, slowly isolating herself from other people over the many years to come. Before she got ill I remember her as being very lonely.
This also went away because once she forgot, she opened herself up to new interaction. She somehow got this amazing new friend in the nursing facility, a woman who like her had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
I have no idea how they found each other every day, since neither of them could remember anything, but they did. Her friend had lost her husband years before, but could not remember he had passed away and was always talking about him and how she had to get home to him. I think, she was lonely too and somehow those two old ladies became like little girls always joking and gossiping about nothing of great importance.
Seeing their friendship was wonderful thing, because it was then that I started to remember just how my grandmothers life wasn’t getting worse because of the Alzheimer’s, perhaps not exactly better either, it was simply different from before. At this point she could still remember us once in a while. She didn’t remember who we were exactly, but she remembered we belonged together.
My grandmothers friend passed away too, however, but one day a new resident came to the nursing home; an old, clearly once big and strong but now frail, Italian man. He would always try and get my attention because he wanted to order pizza. Their care for each other was an expression of love I have never seen before in my life. It was simply that they cared for each other, nothing else.
They held hands and cuddled together and he was protective of her as she was of him. It was pure and I realised that in leaving behind her memories, her life as it was, she had opened herself up to new and wonderful experiences. I knew that she was happier than she had maybe ever been. No traumas, no bad memories, no fears or addictions, all that was left was a childish joy and curiosity about life and of course, her loving heart.
He passed away as well, sadly, and for the last year of my grandmothers life she experienced new hardships. She was in a special care facility and all residents had dementia or Alzheimer’s, so no one could remember anything. So, when my grandmother got hurt – looking not like she had fallen, but like someone beat her up, they didn’t know what had happened to her.
It broke my heart seeing her face all swollen and blue, her face cracked, like someone punched her good. She couldn’t remember, but her body could. Turned out the staff suspected that one of the other residents, an elderly woman, had hurt my grandmother more than once. The elderly woman was quite aggressive and my grandmother was clearly avoiding her and showed her fear like a child would.
Nothing to be done, however, because no one remembered. It happened more than once and to an outsider like me, it was frustrating that I was completely helpless. Luckily, the staff was great and started paying more attention to her and things got a lot better. They always get better before they get worse, right?
Yeah, today is a bit longer than my usual posts, but I got carried away. My grandmothers last had a profound effect on how I see life.
I don’t want to forget my past like my grandmother did, but in her final years it was so clear to me just how much her memories had affected how she lived her life and I don’t want to be like that. I want to be like she was in her late years; free from the restraints of my past and living my life with childlike joy and curiosity. I wish I knew how to break free of those bonds that my past holds over me still.
