i can't think about things that make me happy without feeling sad

i’ve always found it strange how people talk about happy thoughts as though they’re little treasures you can tuck away and bring out whenever you need them. like they’ll instantly brighten your day or help you find strength when things feel unbearable. for me, though, happy thoughts are heavy. they don’t lift me; they bury me.

it starts innocently enough—a flicker of something sweet. what made me write this post was listening to lookalike by conan gray and being reminded of my one month in delhi and all the fun times i had and all the wonderful people i met. for a moment, i can almost taste the comfort, like i’m there again. but then it hits me, hard and fast, like a punch to the chest: those moments are gone. and they’re not coming back.

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that’s the thing about happy thoughts—they’re always tied to something fleeting. i’m not just reliving the happy moments, i’m thinking about how untouchable those moments felt, how certain i was that the good things would always stay. now i know better. the room is gone. the safety i felt is gone. i’m not even sure i’d recognize the version of myself who lived that moment.

it’s the same with people. there are faces i see in my mind, people who once made my world brighter. some of them aren’t here anymore, not in a way that matters. i can still picture their smiles, the way they made me feel seen, like i belonged. those memories used to make me happy; now, they just remind me of how much i miss them. i miss who i was when i was with them. i miss the parts of myself that only existed because of them. it’s a strange kind of grief—one that doesn’t just mourn people but the person i was when they were in my life.

sometimes i wonder if i’m just afraid to move on. like, if i let myself fully enjoy something now, it’ll make the absence of those old moments even sharper. if i let go of the sadness tied to my happy thoughts, does that mean those moments weren’t as important as they feel? it’s a trap, really—this fear that letting go of the pain means letting go of the love too.

i’ve tried to tell myself to focus on the good things in the present, to let the happy thoughts from my past be what they’re meant to be: reminders of what’s possible. but even that feels impossible some days. because happiness, in its rawest form, feels so fragile. i’m scared to hold it too tightly, scared it’ll slip through my fingers or shatter completely. the few times i’ve let myself feel it fully, it’s always come with this undercurrent of dread, this quiet voice in the back of my mind whispering, “this won’t last.” i don’t know when i started associating happiness with loss. the pattern is the same: happiness shows up, and with it comes the fear of how it will hurt when it’s gone.

and it’s not just the past that gets tangled up in this. sometimes, i catch myself daydreaming about a future that feels too good to be real. a version of life where i’m surrounded by love, where things make sense and feel steady. but even those thoughts make me ache. because what if they don’t happen? what if they do, and i mess them up? or worse, what if they come true, and i still feel this emptiness, this gnawing fear that it’s all temporary?

people say you should live in the moment, but they don’t talk about how hard that is when the moment feels so fragile. when every bit of happiness comes with the weight of all the other times you’ve lost it. when even imagining joy feels like tempting fate, daring it to take something else from you.

i wish i could look at happy thoughts the way other people seem to. i wish they didn’t feel like ghosts, haunting me with everything i used to have or everything i think i’ll never get back. but wishing doesn’t change much. the memories are still there, tucked into the corners of my mind, waiting for the quiet moments when they can creep in and remind me of how much i miss the way things were.

i don’t have a neat conclusion to tie this all together. i don’t know if i’ll ever stop feeling this way about happiness, or if i even want to. but for now, i’ll keep trying to make peace with the weight of it all. because even if happy thoughts make me sad, they’re still a part of me.