Why do we always strive towards happiness when the only thing real is—pain?

Those who are in that futile pursuit of happiness, I tell you now—turn back. You will be let down. You won’t find the happiness you look for. Because happiness doesn’t exist. Just when you think you have it, it will leave you.

Pain, however, is something you can rely on. Tell me, as you were chasing that false happiness, was pain not there?

And what about that happiness? You’ll know when you find it to last mere seconds. The pain, however, will last a lifetime. And why chase the good when you can indulge in the great glory of bad, of—pain?

The only thing I know about happiness—if it even does exist in some monstrous form—is that it’s conditional. Everything has to be just right for it to show up in a suffocating wave of bliss then leave. And it will leave.

But pain isn’t conditional. It is reliable, trustworthy, and always there. As you climbed up that great mountain of hardship, did not your knees bleed and head pound? As you kept going, did you not get a big rush of drowsiness and a gap in available oxygen? Tell me—are those feelings not of pain?

And say you ended up finishing your climb. What did you feel then? I’ll tell you what you felt. You felt the other side of pain, and you called it happiness. Happiness made up for what it stole from you as it forced you to climb. Because happiness is pain. You chased it, blindly, not knowing that it would end up being the reason you felt the pain, a futile loop.

That is why I tell you—swallow pain in huge gulps. Because pain is easy. Happiness is hard. Everything unreal is hard. And happiness is unreal.

I tell you, don’t fight it. Don’t chase the happiness and refuse the pain. Let the pain enter you—let it enter your body with the weight of a thousand Spartan warriors.

Aren’t the dreamers the best of the mad? I consider myself a perfect dreamer, a master romantic. I convince my veins I bear the pain through deceptive dreams of hope. I pursue happiness, always
chase it
chase it
chase it
and indulge in the few seconds of its glory.
It makes me high, it’s like a drug I can’t ever have. Because I never did have it.
Happiness was a placebo.
I think it was the more friendly face of Pain.

I am no longer mad.

I no longer consider myself a dreamer,
For one cannot dream with broken sight.
Yes, I had to yield my title of Masterful Romantic to the Grim Reaper,
who stole it from me and gave it to a child.
I had no choice but to accept it,
Like you.

And once you accept that pain—once you are truly blinded by that which will tear your sight into a thousand pieces of broken glass, you will see.

You will see a story in that sunset,
a reflection of your own self in that sunset you will see,
New, blinding hues you will finally notice and
be truly, painfully, happy.

And scream out with broken glass,
falling down your cheeks
That you can see
And you will say,
This is the color of water.

But I refuse to give up dreaming.

But I think I am still a dreamer.
Blind sight doesn't equal madness, and just because I can see doesn't mean I sleep in darkness.
True, I am still mad.
Indeed, I have reached sanity in its perfection.

There was a cockroach, a huge, disgusting, horrible cockroach with a million legs. It was in my room. I started noticing it two years ago. But I knew it long before then.

I tried to run away, to find the beautiful butterfly. But the closer I got to the butterfly, the more I realized it had the body of the cockroach. The same sticky hairs and million legs.

But if I couldn’t find the butterfly, what else could I find? What was my pursuit?

That is when I decided to embrace the cockroach after all.

Now I swallow it. In huge gulps, I do swallow it. I let it hug me at night, I breathe it with the oxygen every day. I feel it in the walls of my room, in my bed sheets, and in the two brown circles inside the eyes of the strange girl who always looks at me on the top of my sink.

It is disgust in its purest form, and I weep as I know that it is the only thing I can rely on.

Filthy. Horrific. It is so great and gigantic and big and huge, and it is the only thing I can rely on.

Happiness is conditional and unreal. You can chase it always and never see it. But pain you can rely on.

Pain is unstable, it is a leaking jar of acid. Yet it is the only thing I rely on.

Those who are in that futile pursuit of happiness, I tell you now—turn back. You will be let down. You won’t find the happiness you look for. Happiness doesn’t exist; joy is the master trickster that lures you with its seemingly good nature that opens up to bad. Pain.

I tell you, don’t fight it. Don’t chase the happiness and refuse the pain. Let the pain enter you—let it enter your body with the weight of a thousand Spartan warriors high on leaking acid. Swallow it in huge gulps. Because pain is easy. Happiness is hard. Everything unreal is hard. And happiness is unreal.

Go further. Swallow it, in a consuming way rather than a suppressive one. Expect it. Look for it. Find it before it finds you. And as you accept it in all of its glory, you will be lifted into a cave so dark that you’ll be blinded by dangerously luminous acid.