More in the Saga of the Unhappy Person:

My word of the day is Compassion.

Generally, I have the happy and healthy person's disease of thinking that people who are chronically sick or unhappy bring at least some of it on themselves, and if they really wanted to be better, they could do so. After all, health is simply a matter of taking care of yourself, and happiness is a decision one makes about how they want to feel, right? To some extent, I still believe that and I don't think I'll ever completely lose that feeling. However, I've come to understand that sometimes unhappiness can't just be decided away.

I hope I never tell someone they shouldn't feel a certain way. I don't appreciate people telling me that I shouldn't be unhappy, or trying to talk me out of feeling the way I do. I mean, I understand that they do that because they care for me, and they don't want me to feel bad, but I really wish they'd just be there for me and listen to me when I speak, rather than trying to 'fix' me. I am not broken, and I am not a fixer-upper project. I know where I am. I can see where I want to be. The path from one place to the other may be as clear as day to everyone else, but I need to find it on my own. And denying my feelings or pretending they're not there just makes it worse later on (which is what I'm going through now). My recent experiences facing the "let's just be friends" and first-time jealousy have reinforced my philosophy that the best way to get past feelings is to be immersed in them, experience them fully, and move on, having taken as much as I can from them to apply the next time I get sideswiped by "bad" feelings. Unfortunately, this means that I go through periods of unpleasantness during which it is difficult to smile or muster up a convincing level of enthusiasm for anything.

I don't know why I'm unhappy. I don't know what I want. I don't even know what I need. And it kills me that I need time away from the people I care about most to figure it all out. Better that, though, than bringing them all down with me. I'm no fun when I'm like this.

Wow, this went from a piece about compassion to a rant. Oh well. I'll bring it back to compassion by saying that I now understand that unhappiness is not something that is so easy to attain, and some people have a harder time getting there than others. But that doesn't mean that they don't want to be happy. And I'll think a little more when I try to help others, and not try to dictate to them how they should feel.

ps
there are no hidden messages to anyone in this message. It's not about you. Or you. Or you, for that matter. It's about me and my issues. As it usually is.