Recently I have been asking myself: “Why can’t I allow myself to be happy?”. I’m really interested in this question. You would think that if you are the person who controls your emotions and views, you would want to do anything you could in order to make sure that you were truly happy. But for some reason, I just feel like this does not apply to me. I feel like for some reason, I don’t deserve it. I say this, but I cannot explain why. Hence, I figured I would make a blog about it and try to see if I could get my feelings out and then maybe, just maybe I would be able to make some sense out of this issue. 
I remember the last time I actually felt truehappiness. It seems like a distant memory now, which makes me feel sad and nostalgic. I was a child who always was positive and enjoyed time with my family. I remember I was so carefree and felt totally invincible. It was so easy to relax. I suppose in essence, this shows that the phrase “ignorance is bliss” has some truth to it at times. In the way that I was young and totally unaware of the negatives of the world, I was so happy and had a certain freedom that I no longer have today.
Now, as a college student, I feel as though I’m more restricted in my actions. I feel as though I have to fit into the mold of a typicalcollege student. You know- I feel like I have to go to class, get good grades, go to different meetings for organizations, be responsible, etc. But what if I don’t want to do all of this? Sometimes I feel as if I do all of this stuff just to please others, just because I know my parents want me to do all of these things. I know, I know.. I am such a people pleaser. You probably want to ask me why I’m doing all these things if I don’t really want to. Well, to put it simply, I think I thought there was really no other choice. I’ve been taught that college is the only thing to do in this society after high school, it’s been ingrained in my mind that higher education is the only reasonable thing to do if you want to be successful. I do want success, but something just keeps me from studying. I just get so distracted.. and I’m pretty sure my depression and anxiety have a big impact on my concentration. Now, I’m not trying to make up excuses here. I know what they say about excuses.. I’m just trying to put everything out on the table, to make everything clear and tangible, in a sense. I want to be real with myself. If you ask me, I need to beat this depression in order to truly be able to focus on my education and other goals. I also need to stop allowing other people to control what I do, which I will talk about in another post.
But back to my question: “Why don’t I allow myself to be happy?”. Sometimes I feel like I’m scared.. If I’m happy, then I won’t feel the need to improve myself.Sometimes I use my current state of emotional being as a source of motivation. It makes me work harder to work on myself and make myself a better person. If I don’t feel like I need to work on myself, then I won’t go the extra mile. I don’t think this is the case, because in my opinion I feel like everyone could use improvement, whether they are happy or not, but sometimes I feel like this is my excuse.
Other times, I think that I stay the way I am because I am used to it. My sadness is my comfort zone (in a way)and I think that once I get out of this state, that I will be more outgoing. But what if I’m happy and outgoing, and people do not like me, or I get hurt from being so outgoing? That is what I’m really scared of- being hurt or betrayed by others. So I stay inside my bubble and protect myself from negative social aspects. I think that this is frustrating to think about, but it is something that is a possibility. Well, these are just some ideas I had. I think it is certainly interesting that people think they know what happiness is, but it’s such a hard thing to attain. I think this is because it is not concrete and people may have different opinions about what it is. Also, people have different life stories and situations. Well, I’m fatigued (both physically and mentally) so I’m going to stop writing before I start ‘rambling’.