Declaring happiness on a wall

thoughts on childhood happiness and adulthood problems

When I was around six or seven years old, I wrote the word ‘HAPPY’ in all caps on the staircase wall in black permanent marker. I remember many things about that moment. But not the exact reason why I was so happy that I felt the need to leave a physical mark on the world.

I remember the feeling: excitement weaved into elation that infiltrated every space in my body and left my cells charged. The glee burst from within me, trying to find a way out; an escape. So I chose the marker as an outlet.

From the way I wrote that word, I know I didn’t want it to be very visible. I shouldn’t have been writing on the wall in the first place. I wrote it the way my sister says I should use a pencil when drawing. She says I shouldn’t apply too much pressure with the pencil. From the word on the wall, I see that I attempted that. Because the letters aren’t filled out properly, they’re broken in some places, thin in others, thick in others. But it was a black permanent marker, not a pencil. So I wasn’t successful in making it semi-invisible.

Whenever I see that word, I can almost feel that feeling of overwhelming excitement and delight washing over me. However, with time, it has been watered down. I still wonder what it was that made me so happy I felt as if I needed to declare it to the world. I can’t seem to find out what.

Then I wonder about the last time I felt happy. Happy enough to declare it on a wall with a marker. I wonder if the older we get, the more happiness eludes us. Then I remember the opening line from the Florence + the Machine song, No Choir, that says “And it’s hard to write about being happy, ‘cause the older I get I find that happiness is an extremely uneventful subject.”

And the song comes to my mind not because I necessarily agree with happiness being an extremely uneventful subject. But because it talks about happiness, getting older, and difficulty.

There have been times that the difficulty of life, of adulthood, has been so overwhelming as to make me yearn, make me painfully wish, to be transported back to my childhood.

When I and some former classmates from secondary school were at that phase of holding on to wilting and fading friendships, out of the need for familiarity and respect for history, there was a line I frequently said to them when we discussed the past— because that was all we had to discuss. I said, ‘I just want to go back to the days when my biggest problem in life was that they were showing the same Hannah Montana episode on TV as the one I watched the day before.”

There are many variations of that line, now I think of it. I just want to go back to the days when my biggest problem in life was: that I couldn’t eat coco pops without staining my shirt, that I couldn’t tie my natural 4c hair in a low bun like the relaxed-haired girlies could. And the list goes on.

Now, problems are a lot bigger, stronger, and angrier. They aggressively infiltrate varied areas of our lives. They shout mercilessly over each other. They don’t possess the respect needed to keep silent when one problem takes the stage. They all speak at once, having no regard for your sanity. They all want your attention. They want you to listen and to listen NOW. And sometimes, it feels like you can’t get through it. Like you won’t make it through, so I wish for the easier days.

When I was re-reading my journals from my pre-teen to teen days, I saw that they were constantly filled with complaints. It made me realise that, aside from needing to adopt an attitude of gratitude, even if I were to go back, the problems of those times—at those times—seemed insurmountable. The only reason I perceive them as miniscule now is because I’ve scaled them. So what does that mean?

For me, childhood was a time I swam in the cool, blissful, and calming waters of ignorance and being cared for. Difficulty, anxiety, loss, and regret had no home in my life. Any problems that occurred, I could count on my parents or older siblings to solve them. I miss that. Gliding through life and being assured it’d all be okay.

Now, I know that was a privilege. The world is wicked enough that not every child has a child-like childhood where they’re protected from the vulgarities of the society we live in.

However, I’ve realised that to be in that exact situation, that cocoon of safety, as I grow, is to be stagnant and to not experience life. As I’ve gotten older, I’m realising life is messy and it rarely ever goes the way you plan it. It curves, breaks and turns things on its head. It changes directions abruptly; sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. And to shy away from experiencing the bad is to also lose out on experiencing the good.

Maybe the reason I’ve not been so happy as to mark it on a wall is because those rose-tinted glasses of my childhood have cleared up. Now, when I manage to feel happiness, it usually comes coated in fear. The fear asks me when the bad thing will happen because this happiness can’t be real.

But I’m learning to allow myself to immerse in these moments of happiness regardless. To remind myself that good things happen. But my happiness seems to be subject to the circumstances, the events, the things that are barely in my control.

Now, I feel finding joy, contentment, fulfilment, and peace are more to my liking than happiness. These seem underlying and less capricious. So maybe I’ve not been in a situation where I want to write ‘HAPPY’ on the wall because it’s not my goal anymore. I still crave them—both happiness and easier days— but they’re not my ultimate desire.