The first version of my answer would be “4+ years ago?”
The second might be “10+ years ago?”
Or maybe something like “too long ago to recall.”
But then… i don’t think i’ve ever been really happy. I’ve experienced fleeting elation and enjoyment, but that’s not the same thing as “being happy.”
I could also say that i’ve never not wanted to live, even while at the height of my wanting to be dead. I don’t want to be stuck with only the option to live a life that’s wrong for me. I want to Live, even when i want to die. After all, living life is the only worthwhile and valid justification for tolerating and enduring the costs of remaining alive. Living life is the reason to continue being alive. When we can’t truly live, when the cost of remaining alive without the things worth paying that price for, when the pains vastly exceed anything that will be gained… that’s typically when we consider suicide.
So idk. Maybe never. Maybe i never was allowed to experience what would have convinced me that simply remaining alive would be worth prolonged suffering. Or maybe i saw enough pretty early, and realized that just remaining alive without being able to live life, isn’t worth the cost that requires death to stop charging.
Life as a subscription service… the free version and the budget-tier, aren’t worth doing. You gotta get the full, ultimate, elite package, in order to get the best value; the most gain for your pains.
So i guess the last time i “felt happy and wanted to live,” must have been back when i was deluded enough to believe that i’d “soon” become able to afford to live enough of life to make it worth paying for.
Or more simply: before i realized it’s too expensive.
Alternatively: when i still thought i had something to offer, and something to gain.
Part of me wants to say about 3 years ago, back when I was still with the girl I loved and still love (before I had to move away and she killed herself).
But to be completely honest with myself, I suppose the last time I felt happy was about a year ago. I still remember that day. I had recently met this archer. Well I suppose she was an engineer, but she did archery on the side, and really I think she embodied that spiritual determination you find in the heart of the true martial artist.
On this day, I was waiting at a coffee shop. It was raining. I was waiting for this archer. We were going to go to the university together. It’s not like I was in love with this archer or anything, but I really did admire and respect her, and so I could not help but feel a little thrilled at the idea of meeting her again–there was a slight, tingling sensation. I couldn’t just sit and wait. I took my coffee out into the rain and I started walking. The cold rain felt cleansing. I remember looking into the grey skies and just letting my mind stray aimlessly. Memories of many past rainy days melded together with the present, and I just walked, thinking of nothing, feeling rain.
The last time I was genuinely happy?…. I mean being myself and not “pretending”….probably 2002.. 2003 early 2004….everything after was just a bunch of bullshit
I can’t remember ever being “really happy”. There was always something that didn’t let that happen for me.
I still want to live. I just don’t want to live my life in my body with the people I’m surrounded by. Is that too much to ask for?
Good question. When I was young, really young. Before everything began. I was too young to know anything but the love of my parents. That was 18 years ago at least.
Happy… want to live…. that’s a hard one. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it, to be honest. I just… do… stuff. Whether or not I want to do stuff doesn’t seem relevant – either way, I’m still gonna have to do stuff, so I might as well just do it and not worry about whether I want to or not. Because in the end, aren’t we all just a bunch of cells? Stupid cellular machinery just keeps chuggin’ away no matter what I say to them. And as for being happy – really happy – truly happy – authentically happy – lastingly happy? I don’t think such a state exists for anyone – feelings come and go and it’s hard as hell to nail them down since they aren’t physical things, so my nails just go right through them. I think a whole lot more people than I’d want to believe pretend to be happy as a way of exerting some weird form of social dominance that I cannot understand, but I somehow doubt all of them are actually happy as often as they appear to be. People are just really damn weird, I guess.
I think a good question to ask the nay-sayers (the ones claiming they’ve never been happy) is; well, if you’ve never been happy, then how can you gauge whether you’ve been happy or not? Slightly ontological, I admit, but I think if you’ve only encountered very brief, anemic feelings of *something* that you think might be related to happiness, but you’re not really sure because you’ve never been happy before, then you’ve probably been happy a lot more than you realize, and you just didn’t notice because you were too happy to pay attention to stuff like that. Then you got depressed again, and that clearly is unpleasant, so it probably took a much larger swath of your attention than happiness would or even could. Everything seems confusing, strange, maybe a bit desparate, when the lights are out. But when the lights are on, you take it for granted because it’s not unpleasant enough to set off any alarm bells in your hippocampus. You could think of it as an analogy to a computer: the computer logs errors, but it don’t log much when shit’s not breaking or going out of normal operating parameters. So who’s to say what happened in that big empty chasm of time between the second-to-last error, and the last one? Maybe the error logging itself experienced an error so it didn’t record any of the clearly-occurring errors that happened during that time-frame. Stupid computer.
9 comments
that’s a tricky question for me.
The first version of my answer would be “4+ years ago?”
The second might be “10+ years ago?”
Or maybe something like “too long ago to recall.”
But then… i don’t think i’ve ever been really happy. I’ve experienced fleeting elation and enjoyment, but that’s not the same thing as “being happy.”
I could also say that i’ve never not wanted to live, even while at the height of my wanting to be dead. I don’t want to be stuck with only the option to live a life that’s wrong for me. I want to Live, even when i want to die. After all, living life is the only worthwhile and valid justification for tolerating and enduring the costs of remaining alive. Living life is the reason to continue being alive. When we can’t truly live, when the cost of remaining alive without the things worth paying that price for, when the pains vastly exceed anything that will be gained… that’s typically when we consider suicide.
So idk. Maybe never. Maybe i never was allowed to experience what would have convinced me that simply remaining alive would be worth prolonged suffering. Or maybe i saw enough pretty early, and realized that just remaining alive without being able to live life, isn’t worth the cost that requires death to stop charging.
Life as a subscription service… the free version and the budget-tier, aren’t worth doing. You gotta get the full, ultimate, elite package, in order to get the best value; the most gain for your pains.
So i guess the last time i “felt happy and wanted to live,” must have been back when i was deluded enough to believe that i’d “soon” become able to afford to live enough of life to make it worth paying for.
Or more simply: before i realized it’s too expensive.
Alternatively: when i still thought i had something to offer, and something to gain.
Good thread.
Part of me wants to say about 3 years ago, back when I was still with the girl I loved and still love (before I had to move away and she killed herself).
But to be completely honest with myself, I suppose the last time I felt happy was about a year ago. I still remember that day. I had recently met this archer. Well I suppose she was an engineer, but she did archery on the side, and really I think she embodied that spiritual determination you find in the heart of the true martial artist.
On this day, I was waiting at a coffee shop. It was raining. I was waiting for this archer. We were going to go to the university together. It’s not like I was in love with this archer or anything, but I really did admire and respect her, and so I could not help but feel a little thrilled at the idea of meeting her again–there was a slight, tingling sensation. I couldn’t just sit and wait. I took my coffee out into the rain and I started walking. The cold rain felt cleansing. I remember looking into the grey skies and just letting my mind stray aimlessly. Memories of many past rainy days melded together with the present, and I just walked, thinking of nothing, feeling rain.
That day was the last day I felt truly happy.
The last time I was genuinely happy?…. I mean being myself and not “pretending”….probably 2002.. 2003 early 2004….everything after was just a bunch of bullshit
I can’t remember ever being “really happy”. There was always something that didn’t let that happen for me.
I still want to live. I just don’t want to live my life in my body with the people I’m surrounded by. Is that too much to ask for?
When I was a toddler, and all I knew of life was fairytales, Disneyworld, my little pony and carousels.
Good question. When I was young, really young. Before everything began. I was too young to know anything but the love of my parents. That was 18 years ago at least.
Happy… want to live…. that’s a hard one. I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about it, to be honest. I just… do… stuff. Whether or not I want to do stuff doesn’t seem relevant – either way, I’m still gonna have to do stuff, so I might as well just do it and not worry about whether I want to or not. Because in the end, aren’t we all just a bunch of cells? Stupid cellular machinery just keeps chuggin’ away no matter what I say to them. And as for being happy – really happy – truly happy – authentically happy – lastingly happy? I don’t think such a state exists for anyone – feelings come and go and it’s hard as hell to nail them down since they aren’t physical things, so my nails just go right through them. I think a whole lot more people than I’d want to believe pretend to be happy as a way of exerting some weird form of social dominance that I cannot understand, but I somehow doubt all of them are actually happy as often as they appear to be. People are just really damn weird, I guess.
Exactly, Lorax is spot on.
I think a good question to ask the nay-sayers (the ones claiming they’ve never been happy) is; well, if you’ve never been happy, then how can you gauge whether you’ve been happy or not? Slightly ontological, I admit, but I think if you’ve only encountered very brief, anemic feelings of *something* that you think might be related to happiness, but you’re not really sure because you’ve never been happy before, then you’ve probably been happy a lot more than you realize, and you just didn’t notice because you were too happy to pay attention to stuff like that. Then you got depressed again, and that clearly is unpleasant, so it probably took a much larger swath of your attention than happiness would or even could. Everything seems confusing, strange, maybe a bit desparate, when the lights are out. But when the lights are on, you take it for granted because it’s not unpleasant enough to set off any alarm bells in your hippocampus. You could think of it as an analogy to a computer: the computer logs errors, but it don’t log much when shit’s not breaking or going out of normal operating parameters. So who’s to say what happened in that big empty chasm of time between the second-to-last error, and the last one? Maybe the error logging itself experienced an error so it didn’t record any of the clearly-occurring errors that happened during that time-frame. Stupid computer.