On Choosing Happiness In Us

It is when I feel weightless, flying above the clouds, that I can truly see us for what we are. I can see this as for what it is. It is messy. It is hard; relationships usually are. It is imperfect. It glows, and so do I, and so do you. Yes, I was happy before. My life was complete; I wasn’t lacking in anything. Yet you still came into my life and added to it.  There is so much joy here, in this moment, with me staring down at us from the clouds. Lying on the greenest of green grass, with the wind tickling my goosebump-littered skin, your arm around me and my lips on your cheek, I am happy.

I was happy before, but this is different. This is golden, like the glorious sunrise that dots the horizon with the same gold flecks that I find in your emerald eyes. When you pull me close instinctively in the middle of the night, I feel at home. It’s the little things that I want to appreciate forever, like the way you listen to me when I talk, your focus entirely on me and in the present moment. I don’t know if anyone has ever heard me like you do, and it feels both rewarding and frightening at the same time, with me making my true self more vulnerable than I ever have. The little gestures, like how you kiss my temples when I catch you looking at me or how you take my hand in yours as we lay side by side, facing each other with absolutely nowhere to be, cause my heart to overflow. I never knew it could be fuller than it was. I am glad I was wrong.

There, of course, are times that I wonder if it is meant to be. That’s the thing that they don’t teach you in movies: the hard stuff. There is miscommunication. There is doubt, jealousy, misunderstanding, and even heartbreak. Yes, there is heartbreak in relationships that last, little, tiny heartbreaks from times our matching green eyes see the world differently or we act instinctively rather than conjointly. However, at the end of those days, when I am lower in the clouds but still high enough to see us under the glow of the starry skies, I still choose you. I still choose the happiness you have brought. I knew happiness before you, and if there ever is a lifetime after you, I know that I will feel it again, but for now, I choose your happiness. Our happiness. It is the happiness we bring each other, our Midas touch that lights up everything our gaze reaches, that I will keep choosing. Other things may glitter on the outside, but together, in this present moment of peace, we are golden.

For the first time in my life, I am choosing now over the promises of the future. I am choosing presence. I am choosing happiness.