If You Ever Need Someone, To Just Love You... If You Ever Need Someone, To Simply Adore You - I Will Be There, Standing By Your Side

I’m sitting here in one of my favourite tops, a billowy romanticist white shirt with floral embroidery at the top. Today it has mustard on both billowy sleeves and a button broken at the top – it’s been a bit of a messy day, with Big Cow burgers at Nation (yeah, being Vegan hasn’t quite kicked in yet) and fire alarm exits and texts to the ex. Today was a day of norms, full of special people and time spent in my favourite place, the place I’m proud to be calling home again – Leeds.

Today is International Happiness Day, and the first time I’ve blogged in months.

I’ve been coerced into it by a little university project, and I’m now going to go and blog about blogging (mind boggling) – however, I’m so happy to be writing. It feels like I haven’t had the time or volition in a long while to say anything, let alone anything worthwhile. I’m constantly torn between writing about hospital experiences and how being bipolar affects my life, or keeping quiet – I don’t want to seem like there’s nothing more to me and that it defines my life. Because honestly, for the most part it doesn’t. I forget how hard things have been. I forget I only left hospital for the last time two years and two days ago. Instead, I remember the feelings of happiness at my cousin and I winning articulate at every family gathering (dream team). I remember my friend’s sunny faces even when fogged by distant memory. I remember the way my sisters laugh when they collude, crumpling into each other on the sofa in my dad’s flat. I remember the way my dad lovingly rolls his eyes at me when I pop on another moody acoustic indie girl singing. I remember the way my mum tells me she’s proud, and my step-dad decorating my room with daffodils and yellow roses to welcome me home.

These things accumulate and make me who I am – not a mental health diagnosis. We can often find who we are, in what we are not. I’m not the best student, or very good at packing my lunches. I’m not a natural athlete, nor am I as fast at reading as I used to be. These things are all fine. They make me happy in the way that I know they are some little quirks that build me up and give me the identity I have today.

Today is International Happiness Day, and the first time I’ve blogged in months.

It isn’t always easy to do the things that make us happy – sometimes these things are terrifying, expensive or you just don’t bloody well know what makes you happy some weeks. We live in a world where we’re taught to crave more, expect less and live by the margins of what is socially acceptable. Well, how about we stick it to the man, watch Captain Fantastic (or Mulan) and always, ALWAYS try to remember you’re doing amazing just for being here. This isn’t simple, and life will hold different meanings for us all – but I figure the best we can do is to muddle through this together, be brave, be excellent to each other, love, and make this world a happier, slightly smaller place.