Note 11

Sometimes, I fear that joy seeks to be the antithesis of me.

I don’t believe that that statement is fact or remotely true. Rather, I feel it deeply because joy has consistently evaded me. Hard work comes into play when I realize I have the ability to curate my own joy. I’ll ask how and never be given an answer. I’ll ask why and be afforded the same silence. Yet joy has been present in my life. In scope, it’s been meager, sized like a mustard seed, but it’s managed to show its face in spurts. How do I make it stay?

Joy for me is a concept that lives in solitude. It’s a singular subject, one that must be entered into with reverence and fluidity. Perhaps I’m afraid that the joyful moments will never outlast the persistent struggle. Why does struggle constantly find ways to endure? At some point it must die. Right?

She’s brought me joy in a way that’s inexplicable. It’s attached to my prayers, manifestations, my desires. She’s held me up in moments where struggle would overtake the growing mustard seed of joy. I’ve had to reluctantly smile amidst intense adversity because of her texts, her smiles, her. It’s disgusting. Truly. Because I have no control over such emotions. Joy finds a way to endure beyond the struggle, and she reminds me that I deserve to experience the depths of it–it’s my inalienable right.

But, I don’t want to feel joy just when she’s around. I want it to live within me, to attach itself to my personhood, to be the balm to this habitual struggle. How do I thrive in a space that’s been forever foreign to me? How do I keep joy attached to my hip? Why has it been so hard for me to grab ahold of?

This is where hard truths come into play, where tough love is necessary. Parts of me are so accustomed to joylessness that it feels uncomfortable to experience the pureness of it. I’ve grown comfortable with the feeling of decomposition, of losing the little bursts of happiness that may hit me throughout a week, a month, a year. Adverse emotions–sadness, anger, pain–have always been commonplace for me. There was rarely joy in the household I was reared in. Joylessness became a welcome guest as it was always struggle’s plus one. With that in mind, joy’s repulsion of me–or my repulsion of it–is a learned behavior; it’s in my nature to refuse it.

I try to consolidate these complex thoughts into digestible bits. I try to solve my insatiable need for knowledge by analyzing my psychoanalysis. Oftentimes, it brings me more clarity and sometimes it places me in a deeper intellectual-psychological pit than I’ve already interred myself into. And no matter how much I parse through my thoughts, no matter how many fancy words I use for sad or struggle or joy, I can never quite crack the code. And maybe that’s the point: we’ll be playing an eternal game of cat and mouse until we realize that we’ll never win; that we were never designed to win; that winning was never the point.

At twenty-four years old, my life seems to finally be starting. I’m fighting tooth and nail to find joy, to nourish it, and to make it stay. And an even tougher time accepting that I deserve it.

Peace, love, and hair grease

– Dierra