Liosuelo

“Why are you still so unhappy?”

That is the question I ask myself often.

I have frequent highs and lows. Although it feels like the lows are more than the highs.

I was in conversation with someone the other day, and I was explaining to them that I felt like I had a lot going on. That there was a lot I was processing. In the middle of the conversation, I realized that is kind of what I am always saying.

There is always a lot that I am feeling.
A lot that I cannot control but want to control.

There is this looming cloud of dissatisfaction that I feel in my life.

No matter how high the high gets, and how good it feels. To feel really happy after prayer. Or to feel uplifted after a good walk. Or to feel excited when I get a new book and finish it. Or accomplished when I complete another draft. Or loved when I get off the phone with someone I care about.

Eventually, there is an inevitable low. An emptiness. I wonder if this sense of dissatisfaction will always follow me. Leaving a trail through my travels, my accomplishments, good news, laughter. Always a shadow following me.

I know I am more sensitive than most. More empathetic. I feel more. I absorb everything like a sponge. And at times it feels like the world does not really reward those types of people. I remember once during a heated argument with my mom, I was yelling at her and said, “Good guys always finish last.”

And that is what I really feel.

After I graduated from college in my mid twenties, I consciously removed myself from society in many ways. From friendships, socializing. I retreated into my shell. Hoping that being a hermit, or simply being more to myself, would ease the blow of my troubles with society. That fewer interactions with others would mean fewer interactions that left me feeling displeased or icky.

In some ways it worked.

But now it feels like I exist inside a small bubble most of the time. I know I am not alone. Many Americans are suffering from mental health issues, depression, anxiety. We have more and more and more. But we feel less and less inside.

Living abroad definitely helped. It helped ease the loneliness, or distract me from how desperately I missed my family. It helped quiet the dissatisfaction I felt about my career and my creative life.

But being back in the United States, in a small town, my life is simpler and easier. There is less newness every day. And yet I find myself still feeling overstimulated by my very seemingly easy life.

I know I am not necessarily living in what I believe is the best environment for humans.

Humans should be surrounded by loved ones. Family. Friends. Community.

We should have work that is challenging but fulfilling. Or at least work that feels like it fulfills a need for ourselves or for the people we love.

Humans are meant to be in communion. Connected to the earth and nature.

I think we are meant to see the sky more than we see ceilings.

We are meant to be surrounded by trees, hearing them sway in the wind, more than hearing my neighbor slamming their front door or drilling into their drywall.

Sometimes my apartment feels like a sterile white box.

And I am just sitting inside it waiting to see what will stress me out next.

Lately I feel very sensory overloaded with all the sounds around me.The footsteps above me. Motorcycles outside the window. So much so, I have to do deep breathes to regulate my nervous system and repeat to myself, “I am safe”.

Everything feels like one extra splash of some chemical I cannot tolerate.

I feel better when I am walking. When I am in nature.

But it feels like I cannot always have that. Not sustainably. Can I walk from one end of the earth to another forever? What about all the other stuff I will have to give up.

Then there is the constant question of creativity and money. The perpetual American problem.

Most of the people in my socio economic bracket, do not have trouble getting a job.

We have trouble finding passion and purpose in them.

And on top of that there is the financial pressure. To get out of debt. To find a forever home. To prepare for children one day. All the things adults are expected to do.

None of it is easy.

Most of the time I am just hoping that life will make sense at some point.

I hope the highs will outweigh the lows.

Maybe it is me. Maybe some people are satisfied with less.

Maybe I am just too much. Maybe I require too much from life.

I have accepted many things about my past that I cannot change.

That my family will never be the way it once was.

That my dad is dead.

That some loved ones are gone forever.

That certain relationships will never work the way I wanted them to.

That I carry trauma from boarding school and college.

That I am Black in a world that hates and extracts.

I have accepted my small group of friends. I have accepted my body and the way I look. I have accepted a lot.

But there is still something missing.

Maybe it is what is happening in the world. The lack of care many people have for others. The wars. The pain. The hunger. The innocent people dying every day.

Maybe being on Earth itself carries a kind of burden. Because you feel all of it.

Maybe none of us are truly free if some of us are not.

Or maybe I am just being ungrateful.

Or maybe I am just on my period.

Maybe I miss my boyfriend.

Maybe I miss my dad.

Maybe I just need a better job.

Maybe I need more friends.

Maybe it is the strange detox of losing weight. The fat cells are upset.

Maybe I am bored.

Maybe I am just disappointed, because sometimes being a writer feels like a pipe dream.

Or maybe it is because I just heard that a piece I submitted might not get into the exhibition.

Maybe I am just sensitive.