Happy

Lockdown light, has been feeling really heavy lately… right? Especially now that  it seems like this thing is not going anywhere and just because the year is ending does not mean the madness will automatically end.

Not to add to the feeling of heaviness, I want to write about something light today. Because we all need light in these dark and uncertain times.

Lets take it back to the late 00’s when life was easy peasy lemon squeezy and the only thing I had to worry about was my profile on MySpace, what background I wanted, what pictures were to be on my slideshow and how I would decide who would be in my top friend list.One of Bobby Valentino’s songs was playing in my Windows Media player, and I had just finished downloading a fresh set of songs from Lime Wire that I could transfer to my mp3 list to make the ride to school more bearable, while feeling like a video vixen at 7 in the morning. Good times. Msn group chats were on fire, a message from my boyfriend had me jumping up and down in my parents living room like I had just won the lottery or a jackpot. Shoutout to Key Bee btw (real ones know).

For some of my younger readers this might seem like a whole different universe and you might not understand half of what just wrote but for my 80’s/90s babies this was our lives, pre instagram, pre WhatsApp, pre hard knock life and adulting. Sometimes I wish I could go back for a bit and just enjoy the lightness of it all. The drama that really wasn’t any drama at all when you compare it  to the apocalyptic psycho thriller life can be nowadays. 

As someone who lives in her head, I have different kind of happy places that I beam myself to when the going gets tough and I need a mental break, the kind that Netflix can’t possibly offer me. A vacation that I took, that I connect with fond memories. Like the time I went to the Canary Islands and wanted to become one with the ocean (seriously, the only reason why I left the beach was because it was getting cold and there was a restaurant calling out my name, because food is life right?) Or the other time when a short trip to Paris was all I needed to feel energized again, standing underneath the Eiffel Tower and jumping up and down like a little child because the lights were so mesmerizing. My happy place doesn’t have to involve a plane ticket, my bed is proof of that; there’s just something super comforting about snuggling into bed with a cup of hot cocoa and listening to music.

In my twenty nine years of living, I have come to learn that a happy place doesn’t have to be a place, it can be a person too, someone that makes your heart smile and it doesn’t have to be a romantic partner. Let’s please normalize catering to all sorts of relationships and not just the ones that involve romance. (It’s not everyday romance please). It can be a friend, a parent, a cousin, whoever makes your heart smile. Have you ever had those conversations with friends were all you did was laugh for thirty minutes straight, leaving the convo with a smile on your face and a weight lifted off your shoulders? Or the kind of convos that go on for hours and hours, losing the sense of time and space because it’s just that good? Whether it is reminiscing about fond memories or making new ones, go into your happy place every once in a while your mental health will thank you for it, especially now that life has been throwing rocks at us as if we were stonemasons.

I'd love to know: what's your happy place?

Love,

Maame