The Notebook

No I am not referring to the Blockbuster hit, I am talking about a plain old spiral notebook. The kind that cost about 10 cents during a back to school sale.

3 years ago I was miserable. I had been miserable for a very long time. Every day was different. Sometimes I was able to put on a smile. I was still climbing the ladder in my old job. I had just had my second baby. I should have been very happy. My husband was a stay at home dad. We ate healthy home cooked meals every night... But there I was, wallowing in my own lonely anxious misery.

I was always the kind of person who didn't like to hear complaints, I wanted to hear solutions. I have always believed that if you don't like how things are going it is your duty to change something. In my own life I finally reached the point where it was time for change. I bought one of those cheap notebooks. It was yellow. I have always felt like yellow makes me happier. I opened it to the very first page and wrote "The Road To Happiness". Then I closed it and put it away.

A few days later I was sitting in a terrible state of anxiety and self loathing. I took out the notebook and sat in front of a mirror. I looked at myself long and hard. I started to write down words that came to mind. They were things I didn't like about myself. Things that were getting in the way of me being happy. I wanted so badly to be happy.

I cried very hard as I filled the pages. When I had calmed down I put the notebook away. About a week later I took it back out and read what I had wrote. It was incredible learning. The first page was mostly superficial things. Things like being fat, having glasses, freckles... physical imperfections that either me or society would see as flaws. Then as the pages went on they shifted to more in depth things. I wrote things like not kissing my husband, being rude, feeling angry, not coloring.

As weird and detached as this list seemed, I realized I had no friends, I hated where I was living, my marriage was failing, my job took up all of my time, I stopped doing the things I have always loved to do, my kids had no idea who I was, and I was too fat and tired and lazy to do anything about it. I gained perspective and I went to work on a plan to change. Step by step, point by point, I took a look at what was in my power to control. How much of this was my fault? Had I really been my own worst enemy?

My attitude changed in that moment. I stopped making excuses for my life. I either resolved to change or to own/accept that I had to work around the circumstances in my life. I was going to be happy, and now I had a map.

(This story took place around 2009)