Finding and maintaining genuine happiness in modern society has become an acutely fatiguing task. And I don't mean finding or being witness to happiness in other people - I mean retaining the feeling of bona fide happiness within myself for prolonged periods of time is becoming very hard to bounce back to. Is this the adult life I was so excited to take part in? I mean, I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I didn't think it would be this hard.

As someone who has a habit of closing myself off in times of extreme stress, you would think that disconnecting from the world would make it easier to process tragedy. If you, like me, are somewhat of a masochist and think tragedy is best processed in isolation, you'll probably know it is actually a defense mechanism borne of the idea that there is healing in shutting yourself away from the hurt of other people. We consciously or subconsciously choose to feel and process quietly and individually.

When you're alone, it's as though the external sounds, thoughts, reactions, etc. have no direct impact on you - it makes it easier to feel and cope with sadness when you aren't so keenly focused on responding to the emotional output of other people or even yourself.

The internalization of high emotion is a rather terrible way to be in theory, and even sometimes in reality, but not everyone can do group hugs, large crowds and near constant "are you okay?"-ing.

Sometimes you need to bounce back to happiness alone, no matter how long it takes.

As someone who has a habit of feeling so deeply (aka, I'm very emotional), that is just how I handle things.  Though I am cynical, I do hold tight to a fast-dwindling belief in the goodness of man. It's contradictory, I know, but there is a part of me that wants to always believe that there is some good in man. There has to be some good in being because if not, then why are we here? To become the designers and executioners of our own destruction?

I refuse to believe that.

There is more than what we go through, there is more than this.

I hate tragedies, I hate what they've become, I hate their rising frequency, I hate that I've become accustomed to them, I hate the process of falling in line, watching people become appointed "friends and family of the victim" choke out words of healing and togetherness, drying tear-stained eyes, expressing grief, expressing outrage, saying prayers that feel echoless, lobbying representatives, writing to congressmen and congresswomen, watching nothing change, hitting a falsely positive plateau and then sadly commencing the process once more.


I hate having to fucking bounce back.

But I do it anyway, because I want to believe in goodness, because I want to believe in man.

So here we go, bouncing back.