The Consequences of Happiness

"Come to 91 Jump Street at 10." The anonymous message on my phone says. There is no Jump Street in this city. There are no parks, either, and I am tired.

The red invitation proclaiming Peter's 21st has been pinned on my board for a month now. For a month, I looked at it, and wondered about the party, and planned his present. Today, I have spent the day being lazy. A few hours before the party, I pop into the gift shop next door to see if I can find him a satisfactory present.

They try to charge me $30 for a metallic balloon, so I reluctantly venture into the city to buy him the perfect present. Of course there are no parks, so I drive home, unenthusiastic and presentless.

They are funny things, 21sts with invitations. When you first get the invitation, you can't wait to go. You spend a month anticipating it, but the day of the party you find that you are tired and lazy and that you don't even really want to go, because it's raining.

But this is always the case for me... yesterday, staring at the queue to the university bar at 10pm, I feared that I was becoming boring because I would much rather stay at home than go out clubbing or drinking. A year ago, I used to go out every weekend. I would not have been standing outside at 10pm on a Friday night, staring at the queue and wishing I was inside. I would have already been in there for at least eight hours (probably since midday). Drunk.

We ended up going to a nice little jazz bar in the city instead, and drinking jellytips and strawberry daquiris, I and realised that I didn't need to go out clubbing or drinking anymore, because I was happy.

I didn't need some random guy to tell me how beautiful I was to make me feel good about myself. I didn't need to see how many guys I could get in one night to convince myself that I was a special person.

(Oddly enough, after this moment of nostalgia I came home to find an email from Bart, an ex boyfriend I met in one such situation, and have not spoken to or heard from for almost a year now. A year later, out of the blue, he wants to see how I am doing. Welcome, ex-boyfriend week. Clint, my last boyfriend, has suddenly decided he wants to talk to me more, and has been offering to give me rides into uni as of late. Will the others surface too? One can only wait and see...)

Now, most of the time, I know I am beautiful and special, and I am happy.

So happy, that I need to be upset. Irrational days where I will make up problems that only exist in my head, and I will cry uncontrollably and cut my arms just enough so that I can see the blood, at which point I will feel satisfied, and calmer, and sometimes, even more confident.

So confident, that I don't even fear the pain anymore.

This is somewhat disturbing. Rosh asked me if I wanted to not be upset. I thought about it, and decided that maybe I didn't want to not be upset. Sometimes, I think I like to get upset and have a good cry. But I don't like the feeling of being sad, and alone, and feeling like there is no hope... yet, I induce it upon myself.

She tells me that once I am ready to not be upset, I won't be anymore.

I hope she is right.

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