The joys of unhappiness

With finals finally over and a couple days behind me, I have a clear enough head to write again. Yay for me! (Perhaps less yay for my subscribers. :) )

So the last few weeks, I have not been in the happiest of places. It's a tough time of year for me: there are a lot of birthdays of people whom I no longer speak to (by no choice of my own), I tire easily of Christmas music, I have the stresses of finals, my friends who usually keep me sane have finals and therefore cannot keep me sane, this is generally a lonely time of year for the bitterly single...and the Jewish...the list goes on.

But the weird thing, I'm happy to be feeling this unhappiness.

No, I'm not a masochist and I'm only a fraction of the self-hating Jew I claim to be, and while my roommate may call me a grinch, I'm not really one. I mean, I love how the streets look with trees lit (but not all the trees; I like the contrast of lit and unlit. I think if every tree in New York were lit, it wouldn't be as special), and I love the smell of the street-side tree sellers. I, like most people, generally hate to be unhappy.

So why am I here, on this blog, to my handful of regular readers and the scores of stumble-upon-ers, that I am happy to be unhappy? Because I've felt worse.

Exactly one year ago, I was unhappy to such an extent that I had no emotions. I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. I barely ate. I avoided people. I was short tempered with friends and family. (And I was in a place that it only got worse until late May!) I was so unhappy, that I didn't feel anything.

It's true that the opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference. And the opposite of happy isn't sad or unhappy, but also indifference. And I was totally indifferent to the world -- and to myself. I cognitively wanted to get out of the funk I was in, but emotionally, I just didn't care what my state was.

So now, when I'm unhappy, I'm ecstatic to be able to be unhappy. Even when a little blue, I jump out of bed in the morning with a vigor to attack the day ahead of me. I may not want to go to class, but I think that's just me being your normal slightly-burnt-out 4th-year college student. I may want to stay under my blanket with my teddy bear when it's cold and rainy -- or snowy, or icy, or wintery-mix-y -- but that's just me being human. I may want to stay blue a little longer and watch a movie that will make me cry a little...but that's me just being...um...me. (It takes someone truly comfortable with his masculinity to admit to curling up with his teddy bear and crying. And to wear pink. But I don't have the complexion to wear pink, I'm told, so I'll stick with the former.)

Bottom line: I may not enjoy being unhappy because, well, it isn't being happy, but I enjoy the fact that I can be unhappy, so by extension, I enjoy being unhappy.

I'm the only person you'll ever see smiling and singing gleefully while being completely unhappy, and it isn't a cover-up.

But then again, I've never been normal.