The Necessity of Happiness

It’s a child’s lie, I think. Happiness and all that…something your mother tells you to make the tears stop falling when you cry. That no matter what, one day you would find happiness and that everything that you’ve ever struggled for, your scars, your weariness, your despair, your sorrow, will all go away when you find that something; your light, your happiness. But that’s not true…not all the way anyway. Because, what happens when that happiness is taken away from you? What then?

I always thought, when we were on our journey, that there was something missing. My chest ached, small and subtly, but the hollowness was there, and it ate away at me near the edges of night, before I fell asleep. I think because at the end of the day, in the silence, things would start to catch up to me. It was a cold, potent despair that sat in my stomach and curled it into knots while my throat closed up. I never knew why the tears came, I always thought--blamed it--on what we were doing, what I was going to do. Then later, when she died, I thought maybe it was because somehow I had known, or because of what I had done to her beforehand, or that I had just stood there.

I just..stood.

But the smile, that voice that shown through her eyes before the life was thrust out of her with his sword. It’s all right. It wasn’t, and it's not..is it..? And I get so confused about it that I can’t think too long on whether or not it is or isn’t. I just focus on they why and ‘you’re not here’.

She was something like a flower. And when I picture her I think ‘delicate’ because she moved like a flower and had all the personality of one, but was resilient like a rose, thorny. Her dress was simplistic, light, and her smile just the same, only it evoked something in me, plucked at my heartstrings. She leant forward and talked to me on our first date, like a child sharing an important secret, with her eyes glimmering in the sparking light of distant fireworks. I think I loved her.

We kept going after that, even though my throat hurt, felt sore and raw from the shattered glass that had fallen from my mouth; a long, broken wail. I let the dirt scrape against my boots and I kept walking, past them with my head bowed, to have the group follow in tow, to an inn, somewhere, anywhere, to get some rest, even though I dreaded going to sleep because I'd wake up thinking it wasn't real, or I'd dream she was okay, breathing, smiling, living as she sat there next to me.. only to fade, vanishing as I sat up with just the sheets pooling around my waist and the cold, clamy sense of loss.

The ache doubled after that, but the one from before remained the same, still hollow, still consuming; a gaping hole in my heart. I was able to ignore it for a while, so that time blurred together and when we awoke the next morning, we buried our lament and trekked on. Before that we had come to my hometown, to the mansion, to the scratch marks on the glass, and I wanted to throw up, my nerves were screaming. I felt shaken and off center, so I moved down the hall, pushed, but stopped after stumbling into a room. We found a guy there, in a very…odd bed, and somehow I convinced him to come with us. I was still perturbed, so we left in a hurry. Later on, I wanted to go back to that place, in the basement, and smash my hands against the glass until it broke or cracked. I never did. We kept on. The fights became easier, they always had been for me anyway, except when we fought..Him, or the mangled corruption he pledged his loyalty to. They came and went anyway, and somehow we survived. My brown haired admirer, who I thought I might have liked when I was younger—though at the time she didn’t much seem to care for me like the rest of them in my hometown—somehow fell in love with me. And despite everything, I grew soft to her too, but I didn’t love her, not in the way she wanted me to.

After awhile, some things happened, and well, I fell away inside myself. Turns out, I’d done it before. But I did it again, and my brown haired admirer, mahogany eyes, dark like coffee with a carmine fringe of warmth, filled with concern, tried to save me. She didn’t. But later on she helped, because I fell again, and she fell with me. See it turns out my memories…well, they were all messed up. They still are, I don’t remember half the stuff I should, that I want to, that I need to. But we both sorta came back together, and though she had known my memories had been all wrong from the start, I guess she was trying to protect me…or was too afraid to confront me and see what was wrong. After that, I ended up back at my hometown again. I’m not sure why, I never really figured it out, but those scratch marks and the glass had settled themselves into my head, and something just at their edges whispered ‘come find me’. It was a dull echo, like the subtle ache that had gotten worse after putting myself together again..and seeing that face and hearing his name for what felt the first time, but was god achingly familiar all the same. And the other, which had hurt because I’d wanted to tell her everything, show her the real me she had wanted to meet—I think that was what she had meant when she said that before she died, though I don’t know how she knew. So I went, past the ominous doors, into the dreary mansion, up the stairs of the blue-lit interiour from the faded light that filtered in through the dusty windows. Steps thunking against walls as I went into one bedroom then another. Down the decrepit steps. Passed the doors that lined the cavernous hall, and the one where we had found him, a red cloaked, obsidian-haired stranger. Into the room of glass and scattered textbooks, papers and files and things that, if I was stronger, would have picked up and looked through, searched for any scrap of information of the bright one. My light.

See, I fractured when I went into the room again, with the glass and the scratch marks and the scattered papers across a desk with vats and whatever else on there. With shelves lining the walls. My hands fisted against the rough concrete of the floor, cold, while I shook and tried not to retch. To catch my breath and make the tears stop.

I found my happiness a long time ago, a lifetime ago from the way I am. But he…my light, he was taken away from me, and I couldn’t handle it. Stupid huh? The most important thing, my everything, was taken away from me and my mind blocked it out, took away his existence and incorporated it into my own self so I wouldn’t die from the recoil. I broke though. I broke and I won’t ever be all right again. I’m in the past somewhere, maybe I died there, I don’t know. In a way I did. And though I want him here with me, I made a promise to live out both our lives. I’ll be okay, I’m not alone, but it’s not just that. It’s not anything, its just…Sometimes, when I was asleep, I could hear him, talking to me, as if he was right there beside me. He talked to me in the dark, before she died, before the journey ever really began. Or maybe it had.

But that's not the point..that was never the point. That doesn't matter.

I think unhappiness is the difference between the way things are and the way we want things to be, think they should be. I want her to still be alive, I think I could have done a better job protecting her...I think I should have saved her. I want...him alive. I think I should have done something different. I think I should have saved them. I wanted to save them. But I didn’t, and things are how they are, and I don’t think they’re going to change. ‘One day, you’ll find happiness and everything that you’ve ever struggled for, your scars, your weariness, your despair, your sorrow, your lament, your tears…will all go away when you find that something; your light, your happiness’.

Liar.