Hope for Joy

Adelaide could not recall the very single moment she became unhappy ...

This is a continuation of an ongoing series.

Read Chapter One - Her Smile Like Sunrise here:

Chapter Two - Hope for Joy

Adelaide could not recall the very single moment she became unhappy. Rather, it seemed her entire childhood, she was carrying a shield of responsibility that protected her from unexpected disappointment. And like a gigantic umbrella, that shield had blocked the sun from encouraging sprouts of happiness to thrive.

Yet, if she had to identify one moment when she realized apathy had seized her, it would have been the week before Ms. Calle gave her the application for Happiness Nationwide. Fourteen, Adelaide was approaching the finals of her middle school courses. Preparing her class for high school, Ms. Calle passed out a survey about what kind of futures and careers they would want to pursue.

Adelaide couldn’t finish it. She looked at all the categories: Medicine, Law, Business, Journalism, Science, Language, Trades … so many more, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with the options. Ms. Calle, the kind woman she is, let Adelaide take the survey to finish at home.

“Something that’s in demand,” her father suggested.

“Something that makes money,” her mother added.

Holding the pen, staring at the important list with the very important choice hanging in the balance, Adelaide froze. The doctor and lawyer waited with proud gazes because they knew their daughter would make the right choice, the sensible one, the practical one. And a little something inside of her shrank: the hope for joy, days unbothered by responsibility.

And she stayed frozen for a week. She could not decide, so she didn’t. She casually “forgot” the survey at home. Studies for all her subjects became weightless because she couldn’t see the direction they were taking her, couldn’t even comprehend it. She floated through the halls like a ghost, so stuck in indecision that life was changing around her yet she remained the same: a kid who forgot how to be a kid, didn’t even have a chance.

That afternoon when she wrote those two little letters, “No,” on the Happiness Nationwide questionnaire, something shook inside her, something she knew had been there a long time. She was unhappy, but not hopeless.

She finally caught back up to the spinning movement of life, like she was plunging into the lake off a rope swing and had to jump now before she lost momentum. She dropped the pen, left her backpack, and took off running through the front door, application in hand.

She had never been so careless. She should have been scared witless going somewhere unplanned without her parents’ permission, but the sudden realization that she wasn’t happy had unburied this pressing urge to fix it, now, on her own time.

She had dreams like this before. She would walk carefully around the expertly tended grass in the front yard, pull up the hood of her coat so that her neighbors wouldn’t recognize her and tell stories about where she was going late afternoon without her backpack, which may have given her a crooked spine.

In the dream, she always walked the long path around the neighborhood through the trees so that no one could spot her waiting at the crosswalk by the neighborhood gates. But, this time, she didn’t walk carefully with her hood up on the pathway around the trees. This moment of reality, she jogged feverishly with her skirt flowing behind her, bangs tangling into her lashes, not because she was afraid of people seeing her but because she could.

Waiting at the crosswalk, panting, her brows furrowed as the awfully simple yet daunting question came to mind.

“Did you really feel so trapped?” the voice of doubt asked.

Her parents were not angry people, or spiteful, or bitter. Her home was no prison. Yet, something inside her grew ill and shrank in the grayness of the blank walls and half-smiles her family too often wore.

They loved her, she knew it so well that when the crossing guard’s flag rose to guide her across the street safely, she paused and looked back at her neighborhood. Her mother and father were loyal to their work, and they inspired her to be successful in life. They equipped her with guidance to help discover her own skill set and understand how she could succeed just like them. Her bookshelves at home were filled to the brim with writings about any topics she had ever shown interest in.

And they cared for her, developing nutrition plans, study guides, exercise regiments to help her grow into the healthiest version of herself. If she was confused, struggling with some sort of issue in school, she knew they would always be there to help her work through it.

“They are happy. Why can’t you be?” the voice of doubt pried.

She hesitated.

“Go back home. You are being dramatic. Just talk to them,” the voice of doubt added.

She shook her head as if she was trying to get trapped water out of her ears. None of this felt right. Leaving felt scary and disobedient. Going back felt shameful and disappointing. She froze. And the second flew by around her. And the crossing guard grew impatient.

She looked down at trembling hands, steadied herself through quaky knees. At the foot of her blue and white striped maxi skirt was a gentle reminder: a smiley face sticker Ms. Calle gave her that morning. It must have fallen off of her folder and got stuck in the soft ruffle of her skirt.

As she considered bending down and peeling it off, she remembered something. That little thing inside her that shrunk at the thought of responsibility, the future, big decisions was her hope for joy.

And, she knew her parents had already lost it. She wouldn’t learn until much later the exact cause of their own apathy. But even then at the crosswalk, foot hovering over the street, she was certain they could not help her find something that had long departed from them.

But, Happiness Nationwide could help her. She looked down at her watch. She had fifty minutes until her parents came home. She could make it to the nearest Happiness Nationwide intake kiosk and back by then if she changed her mind. The simple option of certainty was all she needed to jump into the unknown.

She ran across the street, gripping the corner of the application. She ran with purpose, a sense of freedom she hadn’t known. She ran with a smile on her face, a sunrise smile like Ms. Calle. And as if the encouraging woman could hear her, she screamed, “Look at me, I am trying!”

***

Hello, wanderer!

I hope this found you if you need it.

xoxo,

for now,

-your friend, lost in thought