The easy way out...

Being miserable is easy. Despite what miserable people tell me -well complain to me- I refuse to believe that being miserable is a difficult task. I have a few friends who seem to always be miserable. The world, truly, is out to get them. The universe forces them to be poor time managers, or to fail their test, or for their boyfriend to break up with them. They are always in some form of depression.

In eighth grade I made my first miserable friend. She was, and is, incredibly beautiful. She had thick long red hair and currently has a feather tattooed on the inside of her right arm. She had a stigma I had never been around. She was edgy and dark and she cried ALL THE TIME. She was one of the most miserable people I had ever met. Naturally, in my state of middle school funk, I was immediately drawn to her. I wanted that appeal she seemed to so naturally possess. I wanted to be dark and mysterious and deep. But as I got to know that girl, I learned that she really was broken. That behind her dark eyeliner and stained fingernails was a hard life.

By the end of our eighth grade year, she had moved on from her dark stage. She wore white for the first time in April and I swear I didn't even recognize her. She had moved on, her miserable stage was over. She quit Kurt Cobain for Tom Petty. She was a completely different person. This is not to say that all people who spend their Friday nights smoking and listening to Kurt Cobain in their room are miserable terrible people. It is simply to say that being miserable, for my friend at least, was simply a persona she had allowed herself to fall into.

When I went to coffee with her a few months ago, she told me she was miserable because it was natural. It was convienent for her to wallow in self-pity; to complain all of the time. Now, in no way am I suggesting that we all need to be happy all the time. Happiness is an emotion that oftentimes cannot be controlled. Yet, I still believe there is a joy to be found in living. That even on your most miserable, rotten, Frances Farmer days, there is a mindset that can be found to keep you from complaining constantly.

My father has this phrase: "Happy, shiny people solving problems". I hate that phrase. I hate it because it forces me to work. I hate it because when he says it to you and your angry beyond belief and sick of being wherever it is that you are, it could be the only phrase to push you over the edge. But the reality buried beneath that phrase says that happiness takes work. We cannot continue to blame our problems on our unhappiness, but instead need to take an active role in searching for it. Happiness is not going to just fall down from the sky and give us whatever we want, but instead we need to be willing to find happiness in the things and the places and the people we already have.

Anyone can be miserable.