When my heart hurts

A sorta stream of conciousness flow about being happy.

I couldn’t choose just one photo

When I'm happy, my heart hurts. It gets hard to breathe. Something squeezes around my chest. I get a huge smile on my face, my eyes go all sparkly. But it hurts, it hurts. Because joy is a thick sensation to swallow.

This week, it hurt her a lot. I was surrounded by love. It isn’t any one thing and nothing dramatic happened. I had a regular week. I was at home. I worked. I went to the gym a lot. I did a ton of Taekwondo. I love that. I have bruises all over my arms. I love that. I got a lot done for my clients. My sink broke. I did groceries and cleaned out the fridge. Everybody I bumped into made me happy. 

I don't know what it is, but recently I really started to love my work. I don't think it's love. I think that I, I don't know. There's like this feeling in the air. Today, my work friends called me and I showed them my apartment. I have a lot of giraffes. I love giraffes. And as I was walking from room to room showing them all my giraffes, I realized how much I love my apartment. And my heart hurt a little bit. Like, fuck! I have a place to live that I love. That’s never happened before.

This morning, I was on the phone with two writing friends. We were talking about what we're going to publish in a couple weeks. We're working on big cool pieces together. And, for a second, I couldn't breathe. I was so excited. They were discussing something I'm going to write. It's a type of piece I've never written before. And I was so happy. I was so happy there are people in my life that I could share my excitement about words and stories with. You know what I mean? There was something so cool about being on the phone with friends who are just as happy for me as I am for me.

I don't know why joy hurts. Maybe in the back of my mind there's always something to be sad about. So there's this constriction and contrast. I feel this tension between joy and everything's not perfect. But I'm not complaining about it. I love the hurt. It makes me happier. There's something to it. It's almost like it grounds me. There's this quote, I forgot who said it and what the words are, but it reminds me that in order to feel lightness, you need to have your feet planted on the floor. And that's what I feel like happiness is. I had such a regular week. Everything was so good. And my heart hurt.

Something sweet made me really happy yesterday. I referred a client to one of my friends. He's a friend I barely know. In the grand scheme of things, I mean. We've spoken few words between each other. I don’t know his favorite color. And yet, he sent me a gift as a thank you for this small referral. It meant so much to me. I thought, holy moly, there are people in the world who see it, they see me, they appreciate me. I don't know why that hurts. Is it because there's so many people who don't show that appreciation? Maybe I'm using the word hurt wrong. It's not a painful hurt. It's just like, oh my god, I'm so present in this joy that I'm here and I feel it.

People told me a lot of things about growing up. You're gonna be an adult, life's gonna get real. You're gonna feel things. Adults aren't happy because there’s a lot to stress about. You know what? I’ve got stuff to stress about. I'm still happy. Maybe that's where the hurt is. It's the adult life. Maybe the hurt is the lack of a yin yang. The fact that when I bathe in my happiness, I tend to ignore the stuff that stresses me out. At the end of the day, life is what I focus on or what I feel. And I feel that my heart hurts.