Addie Kirsch

Being effortlessly happy is not something that came easily to me, but the work done to get here was worth it.

There was a time in my life when strangers—from store cashiers to the old friends I don’t talk to anymore—asked me how I was, and my knee-jerk reaction was to lie. 

“Good, how are you?”

It’s not an exaggeration to say I am rarely doing well. Since seventh grade, when I realized an interaction with a family friend was actually sexual assault, my mental health plummeted, and I cried nearly every day. I skipped much more than 10% of the school year; my friendships deteriorated into a state of being unrecognizable and—

I’m stopping the cycle. I’m leaving sentences unfinished. Because I promised myself I wouldn’t write another sad column. I find joy in the little things; the silver star bracelet I wear on my left wrist lines my days. I stare at it when I’m typing.

The chipped black nail polish that occupies the hardened keratin on the tips of my fingers is reliable—a lifeline, grounding my days, keeping me from floating away. 

I can rely on the constants: my beat-up white Asics, the broken pieces of plastic peeling off my Van Gogh phone case. The berry stickers that cover my laptop. 

If I can hold on to these things, it seems, it’ll all be okay. 

If I focus hard enough on being happy, on fostering healthy relationships with my siblings, on turning all my stories in on time, it’ll eventually work. This isn’t to say these efforts haven’t been fruitful—they very much have—but part of me questions how long this will last; happiness can’t be this simple, this easy. 

But it is. True happiness—not the kind that manifests itself in plastered smiles and a made-up story of what I did this weekend, but genuine contentment and joy—really is this effortless. 

Last night, I sang karaoke with my sister’s partner, Jun. Somehow, in the seven months they’ve been together, Jun has become like family. During our performance of  “I See the Light” from Tangled, I looked over at them and saw a smile on their face—a genuine one. I was surprised to notice that my own lips were spread in a similar way. Not contrived or painted on to seem like I was having a good time, but natural. As we laughed together at my failure to hit some of the notes, I thought about how crazy this simple interaction would seem to seventh-grade me. How otherworldly and impossible it was then for me to do something as simple as sing a song with someone I love. 

I re-read my first ever column a few weeks ago. Though I had recovered quite a bit by then, my depression was still lingering in my skin, still gripping onto any ounce of me it could, preventing me from truly enjoying life. After I read the words I wrote exactly one year ago, intense gratitude for the simple constants that get me through my days now—a silver star bracelet to line my days, my chipped black nail polish—pervaded my thoughts. 

I hope this era of my life, when I can honestly tell people that I’m doing well, doesn’t end anytime soon. 

I hope this gratitude lasts.