I'm going to ask myself a question
I can do that, you know
Alright, here we go
What is happiness?

Oh well, let me think about that one
Happiness is...
Ah, I know!

Happiness is you and me
Happiness is being free
Happiness is a summer breeze
Happiness is the sun through the leaves

Happiness is ice cream cone and tater tots
Happiness is daffodils and forget-me-nots
Happiness is a well aged book
Happiness is every picture took

Happiness is how we cope
Happiness is how we fight
Happiness is an eternal strength
Happiness is what is right

In short,
Happiness is you

Depression. Oh malicious depression.
Always there, never fading away, or going away in this case.
Coming at me like she's my first priority.
Staying in my life because I guess I like the company, the feeling like there's always a weight on my shoulders, always a reassurance that I'm definitely not going to be in the mood for anything besides sleep and sometimes not even that.
Depression is my side chick, not only because I need some difference in my brain, some pizazz to keep things spiced up, or spiced down, but because my brain needs some company while the main chick happiness is away.
My side chick goes away sometimes when the main is in town.
While happiness is with me I'm always scared because what if depression finds out and comes to win me with pure determination.
So I ditch happiness...
Depression gets total control over me and I can't seem to find hope of ditching her and finding someone like happiness again.
Depression finds the time to insert unwanted thoughts into my brain, talk to me like I'm some slave to it, I guess I am in a way.
She's inconsistent in her time with me,
I talk to happiness still to fill in the times when depression isn't there, it's not the same with her.
Sure we're close and spend time together, but happiness is never really there with me like she was prior to depression.
Depression is jealous that I spend time with happiness, but I can't help it.
Happiness will always have a place in my brain.
Unlike depression happiness has been there since the beginning.
Depression came along for the attention a couple years ago and now we're in a relationship that only goes one way.
Depression loves me, I definitely do not love depression.
I hang on to depression since she's all I have left...
Happiness is at the back of my mind constantly wanting to be set free from my thoughts.
I just can't let go,
Can't let go of the feeling happiness gave me, can't let go of the love she gave and still gives to me as a far off friend.
You see happiness found relationships in the people around me, she is constantly prominent in their lives, they never fail to give her attention, treat her like the priority in their lives.
I miss happiness, she was great...
Now I have the ***** called depression and she's not leaving anytime soon, so I sit with her, attempt to love her and fail miserably at doing so.
I try and tell her that I don't want her anymore but she keeps coming at me with kindness and affection.
So now I just sit with her and happiness is held in the back of my mind slowly fading away and depression is now my partial past my entire present and most likely to be future.

Happiness is an empty street
And a fast car.
Happiness is a clean, cold pool
You plunge into on a hot day.
Happiness is someone in your bed
Who’s gone in the morning
If you don’t want company
Or who stays if you do.
It’s someone who is happy to read the paper
Or take a hike with you.
It’s not worrying what others think
About you and your beliefs
And the wisdom to know who counts.
Happiness is strength,
Enough to fight the world
Or luxuriate in things gone well.
Happiness is attracting and repelling
Without having to try.
Happiness is a an aching fist
And an attacker’s black eye.
Happiness can be a warm gun,
Depending who gets hit.*
Happiness is not waiting for love,
Then falling in love in seconds.
It is knowing that you are fine
With or without a vow,
Yet being able to say “yes”,
When lightning strikes
And “no” when it’s just a cloud.
Yet happiness is not being sure
And bathing in uncertainty,
Of the pleasure in mystery.
Happiness is loving, faults and all,
An intensity so focused
That you’d gladly die for the one
Who was sent by some mixture
Of sunlight and shade,
On an ordinary afternoon,
Happiness is his body in yours,
His sweat on your skin in summer,
And body heat on cold nights.
Happiness is loving a little boy
Who looks like both of you
And knowing that love can transfigure
Time, exceed itself and encompass
More than one.
Happiness is contentment
In realizing how much you’ve had
And say you’ll feel rewarded
When your random life is done.
Happiness is the legend they tell
About you when you are gone;
The feeling is theirs and maybe yours.
Happiness is knowing that, if you go too far,
That there is no heaven or hell,
Or if there is,
Then anyone can play guitar.

September 9, 2020

happiness comes in a cheek
happiness comes rapped in plastic
happiness is the first new i phone
happiness is 8 car in your drive way
money is happiness?
happiness is spending time with your family
happiness is playing with a ball and a stick
happiness is making a space ship out of cardboard
wealth is not happiness
things are not happiness
people are happiness
imagination is happiness

My happiness ... it comes from the smallest things,
as it flows into the clepsydra the grains of sand.
My happiness ... is the thought of using my wings,
my warm soul that surrounds you with its hand.

My happiness ... is the rainbow after a big storm,
is the fragrant, beautiful scented flower, like a lip balm.
My happiness ... are your eyes as a color spell in uniform
and you embrace me all in your comforting palm.

My happiness ... is the song humming your name
under the burst of tender kisses of a guitar on fire.
My happiness ... is your vibrant glance in a frame,
your touch on a bear fur, like a hot desire.

My happiness ... is my smile in which you mirror in the night,
your face is dear heaven in my humble garden.
My happiness ... is faith in love and in what is right,
it's the flame burning, without asking for a pardon.

My happiness ... is the sleep you will watch for me
with fine caresses on my long raven hair.
My happiness ... is the starry sky where I feel free,
our bathing in the great spiritual love, like a prayer.

My happiness ... is coffee in two until we're much older,
when the sunrays brings us to life without any risk.
My happiness ... is the sea breeze on our naked shoulder,
spring suite appears, warmed by the heavenly yellow disk.

My happiness ... is to be happy even if I'm sad and on my knee,
for you have the power to raise me up and wipe my tears away.
My happiness ... is to swim against the waves of the sea,
for you are expected, loneliness has announced its delay.

What is happiness?
Happiness is living, loving, and laughing
It is filling even the sad times with hugs and smiles
Happiness is many, many things
Among these things is love.
Happiness is having more than one family
Happiness is having a friend
A friend who shares your joy in laughs and your pain in tears
A friend who would gladly take the burden off your shoulders
And carry the weight themselves
A friend who would travel the whole world to find you again
A friend who would go to such lengths to keep you happy
A friend where everything they have is yours
A friend who would take each blow
So you might not know pain
A friend who would never leave you
A friend who is always by your side
A friend who is there both night and day
A friend who would even die for you
Happiness is knowing you will never be alone
Happiness is having a family all together
Happiness is a quiet time alone
Happiness is being among family and friends
Happiness is many things to many different people
But happiness regardless is a good thing indeed
Happiness is a smile or a hug when sad
Happiness is a rainbow after the storm
Happiness is the sun shining through a cloudy day

My sadness gets up at 2:00 am
Then again at 4:00
And 5:30
And 6:45
Then 7:00am

After the snooze alarm goes off
My sadness wears concealer and mascara to make it
feel awake
and pretty

My sadness hides behind a joke, a smile, a laugh
My sadness is scared of my happiness, who
Stops by once in a while
but just for a quick hello

My sadness doesn’t show through the way
I pull myself together in the morning like nothing is wrong
Or when people ask “how are you?” And replies “I’m good!”
People don’t see my sadness in the stories I tell,
the schoolwork I do, the advice I give them for their problems

My sadness doesn’t show up like other’s sadness
It doesn’t hold its head down in the hallway,
or sleep in until 12, it doesn’t go days without eating,
and it doesn’t try to keep happiness in a locked door

No.

My sadness only shows through the poetry I write
The music behind my earbuds
The short stream of tears when the doors are
closed and the windows are open hoping that just one
small bit of happiness will come inside and stay for longer
than a joke, a laugh, a smile.

My sadness stays in the shower longer than usual,
gets angry a little too easily, and cries a little too much
when watching The Notebook.
It doesn’t look like sadness or walk like sadness or talk like sadness
But that doesn’t mean it isn’t sadness.

No.

You can’t see my sadness.
It doesn’t show like a person with a
broken leg and crutches
You don’t take one look at it and know that
It is crippled and broken down

No.

My sadness is like cancer
You don’t know it’s there until you strip me down
peel back the layers of my skin
to see that I’ve been breathing an air like smoke
that’s caused a growth in my lungs and heart so
that each breath I take, each drop of blood that flows
through my veins feels like a weight on my chest that
can only be lifted with you laying beside me and holding
me until I feel as light as a feather souring through the wind
after finally break free of its bird. Its burd-en.
The thing that’s been holding it down, keeping it from doing
the impossible. But, possibly you can’t lift that weight.
possibly it’s only me that can lift that weight.

Possibly it’s been me the whole time.
Possibly I am the one that kicks happiness out the door
When it stops by because I don’t see happiness
Without you here
But how dare I place the image of happiness
Only in your presence when happiness can fall
In from any joke, or laugh, or smile
And happiness can stay past the sunset
Because you can still see happiness when all you feel
Is the darkness
Happiness can come in when the door
Is bolted shut because happiness doesn’t
Ask if it can come over
Happiness waltzes right in, unannounced, but
Always welcome.
So the next time my sadness is sitting at the table
And we are having a cup of coffee,
And happiness runs through the door
I will show sadness the exit
And then turn to happiness and say “it is great to
See you, please stick around for a while.”
And later when it gets up to leave
I will grab it by the arm and hold
onto it tighter than you ever held me.

Happiness .
A word with no true meaning but a word that somehow depicts all of what one is feeling,
Happiness is when you catch yourself smiling for no reason at all.
Happiness is when everything possible is going wrong but you bring yourself to laugh through it all.
Happiness is accepting oneself fully for when you know your flaws and weaknesses no one can ever use them against you.
Seeing beauty in the bad is apart of this life.
The bad is what makes one who they are and pushes one to strive for everything one could ever dream of being.
Happiness is making everything worth seeing.
If there is one thing that one deserves it is to be happy,
to feel happiness and to allow the inner joy to shine through the inner walls of ones being.
Happiness is entitled to us and no individual , no moment , no fragment in time can keep one from experiencing happiness.
To live is a choice , to change is a choice , to succeed , to be happy is a matter of choice  .
Choose happiness , choose to live fully,  this life changes , and progresses far to fast to question your happiness...
Love yourself enough to let go of anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy.
Loving yourself is a matter of happiness.
At times one may fail to see why others see what they see in them but in all honesty it is because one and others are looking at two completely different things.
One sees something they fail to understand and another sees of everything they've ever dreamt of.
To love one self is the foundation of happiness .
And to be happy is to truly live . And happiness is a choice that no individual, thing, or place can take away .

- Tamera Brown

I thought I would never laugh again,
I thought I would never smile again,
I've only realized that I needed time and space to think,
I needed time to know what I want
Even though I knew what I wanted.
I only got a time to find myself, 
I only got time to find who "Am I"

I'm glad that my heart is healing day by day,
Hour by hour,
I'm glad that my wounds are now healing.
Is it because I've found happiness?
I would say;
Every piece of happiness I have, 
Comes from my very own supportive friends I have,

The pain I was feeling before
It was preparing for my happiness,
It was preparing me for my destiny,
This pain was basically showing me that I can also do everything for myself.

I thought that I've failed in life,
Because I can't stand up for myself,
I thought that life has given up on me,
But then I realized that it was preparing me for another day.
Life has showed me that there are people I cannot trust,

So, I was lost because no one could help me,
I was lost to an extent where I've come to realize that no one wants to hear me,

I was lost but then I was found.
I was found by someone who can prepare me for tomorrow,
Someone who showed me the correct path,

Someone who allowed me to lean on her shoulder when times were hard,
I will never forget the day I've met the person who contributed much of her time on me,

The person who talked with me and made sure that I understand, 
And at the end of the day I feel better.

The person who contributed her time,
Her space and showed me that life has it's own ups and downs. 

Someone I've trusted with all my secrets and became true to me.
But the question is;

How does this become part of my happiness?

This became part of my happiness 
Because only one person became interested to hear about my pain,
Not only that but also to help me step by step.

I believe that I had to trust only one person,
"The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them."

Happiness has been all my heart was looking for,
It was what I always wanted.

I believe that for one to find happiness,
They need to accept themselves for who they are,
And begin to search for it different ways.

Here I am today,
I managed to find happiness,
I've managed to search for the seed to happiness. 

I think I needed happiness to find myself, 
But firstly I needed to forgive and let go,
I've managed to find the seed to happiness,
The seed to freedom, 
And the seed to find myself.

The most important thing is;
Find a seed that will grow the flowers of happiness to your life,
The flower that will unlock the seed of happiness...

Happiness
For me it's a different definition
Happiness is a rose
Red, full of life
Happiness is warm blankets
Watching the snow fall slowly
Happiness is tea and books
Stories of elves and magic lands
Happiness is a summer evening
Riding in the car with my dad
Happiness is a hug from my nephew
His bright blue eyes sparkling
Happiness is a song
One that I can sing over and over
Happiness is a ladybug
Crawling on my finger
Happiness is little things
Happiness is what I make it
Happiness is the world

I just want you
to be happy
but sometimes
and selfishly
I want to be
your happiness

But
'happiness is a choice'
you say
and you didn't choose me

I clung onto the idea
since you made me happy
it would be the same for you

What is happiness now?
where has it gone to?
In time, society has robbed us
the real meaning of happiness

Go on your own way
and pursue your happiness
for your smile, is my smile
your laugh, is my laugh

and I'll be happy
when you find your happiness
because I love you
always have, always will