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My thoughts return to a repeated question: are we born to be happy, or is it a learned behavior? I don’t want to know from some study of lab rats, or by analyzing people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries. I simply want to know anecdotally, in my own life. I remember being happy, and I remember being sad, but then when I dive into the memories, I can barely recall either. There is a prevailing sense of anxiety slipping through everything, as if I were throwing a caffeine pill into each memory, simply to watch the shearing effect it would have. But feeling happy, and feeling sad, are so …

I forgot for a long time why I ever started writing in the first place. It wasn’t to keep the memories for longer than they would float in my head, and it wasn’t to share the writing with others. It was simple; it made me feel better. It kept me from circling the drain: it was therapist, Xanax, and best friend, all insulating me from the grating quiet of everyday life. Somewhere it moved away from that. It became another part of my life where I needed to allocate time, another pull on the thin thread keeping things together. And then, when I’d forgotten how it feels to write frantically …

Middle age comes on hard. People like to say it’s a state of mind. I don’t disagree, but there are elements that are unavoidable, regardless of your mindset. I often times think about what I would say to a younger “me”. It’s seems like such a waste that despite all of the mistakes I’ve made, they will have to be repeated by the human race ad infinitum. A part of the life experience, I suppose. But if that were actually true, I wouldn’t be jealous of my younger self. I keep hoping that something from that old version of me rubs off on the person I’ve become. …