d contradicshun of happyness

I’m really happy right now. Or at least, I think I am. I’m in a good place; life is going smoothly, and things are falling into place in a way that would’ve made past me exhale with relief. So why does happiness feel so foreign, like an uninvited guest crashing a party? Instead of celebrating its arrival, I sit in a corner, drowning in a checklist of tasks and deadlines, clutching my stress like a comfort blanket.

I’ve learned to mistrust happiness, I think. It’s fleeting, ephemeral, unreliable. It always seems to show up at the same time as chaos; just when life gets too busy to let me pause and enjoy it. Good times are never solitary; they always come with a twin shadow of stress. There’s always something urgent, some expectation to meet, some responsibility tugging at my sleeve like a restless child.

I’m in this strange contradiction of being both happy and overwhelmed. My heart knows it should celebrate, but my brain is too preoccupied calculating the hours I need to get everything done. Happiness feels like a luxury I haven’t earned yet, as if I need to clear my to-do list before I’m allowed to sit with it.

Maybe it’s because I’ve been conditioned to believe that good things have an expiration date. That they’ll slip away the moment I stop running, stop working, stop hustling. Or maybe it’s the guilt — this gnawing sense that if I let myself relax, I’m somehow squandering the opportunities I worked so hard for.

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