The Reality of Unhappiness

What do you do when you think your happiness depends on something, and when you finally achieve it you’re the least happy you have ever been?

For a long time I wanted to be thin.

All the way through school I compared myself to most people around me. Not just my friends, but strangers too. I would look at them and long to be as thin as they were. I thought that if I was, I would be happy. Happy in my own skin and finally confident enough to do anything I wanted, wear anything I wanted, be anyone I wanted.

A lack of confidence was never something that showed on the surface of my personality, but I always had personal issues with my weight and, looking at other people who were slimmer than I was, I just remember thinking they must be happy because they were thin. Even when my friends confided in me over their personal body hangups, all I thought was “well at least you’re thin”. I was sure that was all that mattered.

Throughout secondary school I dipped in and out of fad diets, “health” regimes, restricting myself and not treating my body the way I should have. There was never a time when I wouldn’t have changed the way I looked had I been given the opportunity.

I don’t think that developing anorexia is ever as simple as wanting to loose weight and going too far, but the idealistic view of being thin and thinking weight loss would make me happy certainly played its part. This need and desire to look a certain way shaped how my anxieties and mental health issues manifested and presented themselves in a physical sense.

At the beginning of my eating disorder, I lost a lot of weight rapidly. And I knew that something was wrong, I didn’t feel like myself. But I could see as I stepped on the scales each day and as I inspected myself in the mirror that I was loosing weight, so I didn’t want to do anything about how mentally unwell I felt, the fact that I didn’t want to interact with people around me, that I just wanted to go to bed at 7pm every day, that I was losing all motivation to be sociable. Because I was on my way to being thin, and I thought that, soon, none of those things would matter – I’d be happy.

And then I was thin. And I was the most unhappy I’d ever been in my life. It shocked me. This cruel and harrowing eating disorder had given me what I thought I’d always wanted and needed, but in the process it took over my life. It cost me relationships, a degree and a job, and still being thin was no solace. Thin was not comforting, it wasn’t warm. It wasn’t a shoulder to cry on or a friend to laugh with, it didn’t give me happy memories, it didn’t taste like my favourite food.

The thing is, I was so sure that being thin would equal happiness that I didn’t stop to think that I could be wrong. That actually the way I look or the materials things around me might give me temporary joy, but certainly not lasting happiness. Especially when I base these desires on what I want other people to think of me, and how I compare to everyone else.

What I’ve come to realise is that true happiness can be found when I accept myself as I am. Because then no matter how that changes, whether I start earning more money or gain a bit of weight, if I have a nice house or I can’t afford a new pair of shoes, I’m still happy. The thing is, there is nothing wrong with having aims or ideals in mind, there is nothing wrong with wanting to lose weight or tone up, and god knows I love a nice hair cut and a new handbag. What we have to remember is that our happiness should not and cannot depend on these things, and that we do these things for ourselves and not for anyone else, because we want to, not because we feel we should.

When you hold that thought with you, you can stop wasting time and energy on things that don’t make you happy. You can focus more on the things you enjoy and the people you love, and that’s where true happiness lies.