The Limit of Happiness
April 2016
A wise old man once said, “the only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself…” What Hemingway forgot to say was that spring always ends and even the flowers fade; we, ourselves, are people too, and maybe sometimes we are the limiters of our own happiness.
It is a cool evening in October, the sun is setting over the cobblestone streets and multi-gabled rooftops. The limestone buildings, built centuries ago, glow and a flock of geese fly overhead. It’s a beautiful night. Most nights here are beautiful. We are three blocks from the apartment, we are already late for dinner, but we have to turn back.
“No, we can’t turn back.”
“We have to turn back. I think we left the stove on,” she pulls at her coat sleeves.
“We haven’t used the stove in a week, why would it be on?”
“We need to turn back I know something is wrong,” she starts walking towards the apartment.
“We are already late, I promise you everything is okay.”
“I can’t. I need to go check.”
We turn around.The sun has now set, it is getting colder. Back over the bridge, across the train tracks. Unlock the door, enter the flat. All lights are off, but we turn them all back on. Check the stove. Yes, it is off. Of course it is off, I knew it was off and I think she probably knew it had been off too, we don’t cook at home. We check all the faucets, they’re all off, too. Make sure the heater is off, it might explode. Turn off all lights. Lock the door. Unlock the door. Lock it again, make sure it is locked. Now we can go.
We are late. We hail a cab, one of those old fashioned black ones. Over the cobblestone streets. The lights reflecting on the streets like millions of little diamonds. I look over, she is biting her lips: “What if we forgot something?”
“Don’t worry, everything is okay. The apartment is fine, we are fine. We will get to dinner and everything will be okay,” I say. I say the same thing, or variations of it, about every fifteen minutes.
Always a constant stream of “what if’s”. Always a constant worrying something might happen. We can’t be happy, we can’t be carefree. This is supposed to be the time of our lives, but there is always that tension pulling at our minds that the light was left on, the stove is alight.
I look over at this girl, her long black hair and porcelain skin. So delicate, so fragile, already cracking. Every day is the same. I plan for an extra half an hour before leaving so that everything can be checked and double checked. Every lock must be re-locked and every switch turned on and off, and then off and on again. Half an hour isn’t enough time. Some days we don’t leave for hours. Somedays not at all.
This girl with the long black hair and the porcelain skin, she is perfect. She has the perfect life, a loving family, a good, private school education, and the means to have the world. She shouldn’t have any “problems.” It hurts me. I sit in the room beside hers. I am ill, very ill. I am stressed, to the point of insanity. I can’t afford this life, she can afford everything. She is the one falling apart. I am not allowed to feel this way, at least I can’t show her that I feel this way, or it might cause another crack. I must be her light in the hallway, because no one else will be–at least that is what we think, that is the life we have created.
She was my best friend. I’m not even sure what that term means anymore. Little kids use it endearingly. “This is my best friend, we play with our dolls together and she lets me be the pretty one”…
“Best friend”, what does it even mean? Is it the friend who we are closest with, do the most with, see the most, share the most? I don’t know. I don’t know who this girl is, or was, all I know is she was the best. Maybe it was because we did the most for each other. But we also did the least. We just existed. Side by side we existed and we survived. We lived through moments of constant temporary happiness. We were happy, happier than I have been in my entire life, but that happiness was temporary. So fragile, it was a false kind of happiness made up of fake promises and holding together each other's brokenness. We never really tried to piece the broken parts back together. Rather we talked in length about our problems, separating and analyzing them, like you do to a puzzle before putting it together. But we got bored before putting it all together and so never saw the greater picture.
She had, still has, anxiety. Anxiety to such a point that it ruled her life. Anxiety is one of those words that we toss around with reckless abandon. Everyone has “anxiety”. We all worry and have constant fears. What does anxiety even mean?
It always starts small. Just a small tick, they say. That nagging feeling that you left the stove on or that the door is unlocked, slowly day after day, it grows to an overwhelming, all encompassing cyclone of worries and fears. You might not even realize it’s happening, but then one day you find you can’t leave the house because of the constant stream of “what if’s?”. For this girl it started with just a little bit of germophobia– the kind that inspires people to carry hand sanitizer around all the time. Soon though, the threat of the 0.1% of bacteria the alcohol doesn’t kill became a threat and so she had to touch everything through the protective layer of a paper towel. She could never eat off used silverware, only plasticware straight out of the box. Towels were used once and then washed three times. This germophobia extended into her subconscious and she feared more than germs. Words and thoughts became like bacteria. She feared the thoughts of others, in constant paranoia about what others might know. She retreated into complete solitude, confining in only me. I became her personal waste basket, a place to dump the unwanted germs, every paranoid thought and anxious feeling.
It is now over a year since we lived in that small apartment in that far away place. Everything has changed, but in many ways nothing has changed. I am in San Francisco, she is in Los Angeles. She is on her way to becoming a lawyer and I, well I am not even sure what I am doing. My phone rings, she always calls at the same time. I answer. We talk for an hour. The usual, “tell me about your day”. We go through the motions, pretending everything's okay. It always starts out perfectly “fine” but then the thoughts begin to spiral. She starts talking herself into a tunnel. One thing leads to another. She can’t trust anyone, her parents are spying on her, her professors want to fail her, her boyfriend is tired of her, her friends are using her, and on and on.
“It’s okay, everything will be okay, I promise,” I say in an almost robotic way.
“How do you even know that?”
“I know because it is always true. Everything always works out. We live in our constant temporary happiness, remember? This is just a space in between, soon you will be happy again.”
I know it is a lie. So does she, but we pretend nevertheless. We hang up, I imagine her sitting alone in her apartment, afraid to leave lest the heater explode, afraid to eat something should it be expired. I sigh and thank the Lord I am okay.
As I leave my apartment though, I double back. What if I left the stove on?
It is a cool evening in October, the sun is setting over the cobblestone streets and multi-gabled rooftops. The limestone buildings, built centuries ago, glow and a flock of geese fly overhead. It’s a beautiful night. Most nights here are beautiful. We are three blocks from the apartment, we are already late for dinner, but we have to turn back.
“No, we can’t turn back.”
“We have to turn back. I think we left the stove on,” she pulls at her coat sleeves.
“We haven’t used the stove in a week, why would it be on?”
“We need to turn back I know something is wrong,” she starts walking towards the apartment.
“We are already late, I promise you everything is okay.”
“I can’t. I need to go check.”
We turn around.The sun has now set, it is getting colder. Back over the bridge, across the train tracks. Unlock the door, enter the flat. All lights are off, but we turn them all back on. Check the stove. Yes, it is off. Of course it is off, I knew it was off and I think she probably knew it had been off too, we don’t cook at home. We check all the faucets, they’re all off, too. Make sure the heater is off, it might explode. Turn off all lights. Lock the door. Unlock the door. Lock it again, make sure it is locked. Now we can go.
We are late. We hail a cab, one of those old fashioned black ones. Over the cobblestone streets. The lights reflecting on the streets like millions of little diamonds. I look over, she is biting her lips: “What if we forgot something?”
“Don’t worry, everything is okay. The apartment is fine, we are fine. We will get to dinner and everything will be okay,” I say. I say the same thing, or variations of it, about every fifteen minutes.
Always a constant stream of “what if’s”. Always a constant worrying something might happen. We can’t be happy, we can’t be carefree. This is supposed to be the time of our lives, but there is always that tension pulling at our minds that the light was left on, the stove is alight.
I look over at this girl, her long black hair and porcelain skin. So delicate, so fragile, already cracking. Every day is the same. I plan for an extra half an hour before leaving so that everything can be checked and double checked. Every lock must be re-locked and every switch turned on and off, and then off and on again. Half an hour isn’t enough time. Some days we don’t leave for hours. Somedays not at all.
This girl with the long black hair and the porcelain skin, she is perfect. She has the perfect life, a loving family, a good, private school education, and the means to have the world. She shouldn’t have any “problems.” It hurts me. I sit in the room beside hers. I am ill, very ill. I am stressed, to the point of insanity. I can’t afford this life, she can afford everything. She is the one falling apart. I am not allowed to feel this way, at least I can’t show her that I feel this way, or it might cause another crack. I must be her light in the hallway, because no one else will be–at least that is what we think, that is the life we have created.
She was my best friend. I’m not even sure what that term means anymore. Little kids use it endearingly. “This is my best friend, we play with our dolls together and she lets me be the pretty one”…
“Best friend”, what does it even mean? Is it the friend who we are closest with, do the most with, see the most, share the most? I don’t know. I don’t know who this girl is, or was, all I know is she was the best. Maybe it was because we did the most for each other. But we also did the least. We just existed. Side by side we existed and we survived. We lived through moments of constant temporary happiness. We were happy, happier than I have been in my entire life, but that happiness was temporary. So fragile, it was a false kind of happiness made up of fake promises and holding together each other's brokenness. We never really tried to piece the broken parts back together. Rather we talked in length about our problems, separating and analyzing them, like you do to a puzzle before putting it together. But we got bored before putting it all together and so never saw the greater picture.
She had, still has, anxiety. Anxiety to such a point that it ruled her life. Anxiety is one of those words that we toss around with reckless abandon. Everyone has “anxiety”. We all worry and have constant fears. What does anxiety even mean?
It always starts small. Just a small tick, they say. That nagging feeling that you left the stove on or that the door is unlocked, slowly day after day, it grows to an overwhelming, all encompassing cyclone of worries and fears. You might not even realize it’s happening, but then one day you find you can’t leave the house because of the constant stream of “what if’s?”. For this girl it started with just a little bit of germophobia– the kind that inspires people to carry hand sanitizer around all the time. Soon though, the threat of the 0.1% of bacteria the alcohol doesn’t kill became a threat and so she had to touch everything through the protective layer of a paper towel. She could never eat off used silverware, only plasticware straight out of the box. Towels were used once and then washed three times. This germophobia extended into her subconscious and she feared more than germs. Words and thoughts became like bacteria. She feared the thoughts of others, in constant paranoia about what others might know. She retreated into complete solitude, confining in only me. I became her personal waste basket, a place to dump the unwanted germs, every paranoid thought and anxious feeling.
It is now over a year since we lived in that small apartment in that far away place. Everything has changed, but in many ways nothing has changed. I am in San Francisco, she is in Los Angeles. She is on her way to becoming a lawyer and I, well I am not even sure what I am doing. My phone rings, she always calls at the same time. I answer. We talk for an hour. The usual, “tell me about your day”. We go through the motions, pretending everything's okay. It always starts out perfectly “fine” but then the thoughts begin to spiral. She starts talking herself into a tunnel. One thing leads to another. She can’t trust anyone, her parents are spying on her, her professors want to fail her, her boyfriend is tired of her, her friends are using her, and on and on.
“It’s okay, everything will be okay, I promise,” I say in an almost robotic way.
“How do you even know that?”
“I know because it is always true. Everything always works out. We live in our constant temporary happiness, remember? This is just a space in between, soon you will be happy again.”
I know it is a lie. So does she, but we pretend nevertheless. We hang up, I imagine her sitting alone in her apartment, afraid to leave lest the heater explode, afraid to eat something should it be expired. I sigh and thank the Lord I am okay.
As I leave my apartment though, I double back. What if I left the stove on?