Choose Happy, Choose You

Photo Credit: Francesca Tirico

A few months ago, I was told I had become a self-centred, hyper-positive airhead who didn’t deserve the life I was leading. The person who said it belonged to a time before; a time when I was different to how I am now. They wanted that version of me to return, I think. I was gullible. Easier to use.

Ever since I was sixteen, you see, doctors had been trying to get me on antidepressants. I used to be the girl who hid away in her bedroom watching the world pass her by through a window.

Depression was a dirty word as a teenager, something to be ashamed of and hidden. I was adamant there was something wrong with me and surrounded myself with people who felt the same way about themselves. I developed crippling social anxiety and had panic attacks when more than two people would visit, stopping me from going to family functions unless completely necessary and forcing me to speak only to a handful of people.

As well as becoming increasingly isolated, I analysed every minuscule detail of the world; I was positive every terrorist, neo-Nazi and racist was coming after me and my family, so I lived vicariously through televisions and movies. The longest I ever left the safety of my room was when I went out for cinema days at the Odeon. I hid it well, though. I still hide it well when it returns.

I became a writer; a job that rarely requires leaving my house. It was the perfect solution, I thought. I could sit at home and write during the day, and spend evenings and weekends with my tiny group of friends and close family. I would still panic whenever my parents went off to Tesco for the weekly grocery shop, then panic even more when they were still gone twenty minutes later than the time they said they’d be home. But they were safe. I was safe.

Everything was fine. Sort of.

Last January, a writer friend who I had met on Twitter invited me to hear her speak at The Hague at the end of April. I politely replied that I would look into it, all the while sure it would be forgotten and never spoken of again. However, just an hour later she had sent me e-mails packed with information: flight plans, train timetables, things to do in the area, how to obtain an iAmsterdam city card. She would put me up for a week, she explained, so I wouldn’t have to pay for food or board. As for the talk in The Hague? Her and her husband were driving there so I would go with them, and the ticket to the event was already sorted. Momentarily devoid of all sense, I booked my ticket.

Amsterdam, it turned out, was life changing. I pushed my anxieties and fears away and made the most of my stay: I went out sightseeing alone, attempted (and failed miserably) to learn Dutch, spent hours with the masterpieces my Art-History-studying-sister had taught me about. While there, my friend told me my bravery inspired her. There I was, in a country where I didn’t speak the language, alone, with someone I had met on the internet.

In truth, it was HER that inspired me. The fact she was a cancer-survivor in her twenties aside, she had pulled me out of my comfort zone and pushed me into the deep end head first, forcing me to learn to swim, helping me discover who I really was.

When I returned to the UK, I started going out more often; coffee dates with friends who weren’t in my inner circle, visits to art galleries and museums, walks in areas of London I hadn’t dare walk alone before. I started journaling, practising the art of gratitude and even enrolled in a CBT diploma to better understand what was going through my head and how to deal with it without the use of drugs.

Now I’m writing this from Belgium; and that same friend who encouraged me to visit her in Amsterdam is sitting beside me. I’ve spent half of this trip alone: meandering through the streets of Ghent and Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp; meeting new people, learning about new cultures, exploring a new way of life. I realise now there is something that needed to be said to that person who told me I was a self-centred, hyper-positive airhead who didn’t deserve this life I’ve created for myself, and this is it:

This my life because I CHOSE it.

I choose to get better. I choose to be happy.

I work for it every single day. I fight for it. And for those reasons alone, I DESERVE it!

I have every right to disappear for weeks at end, without a word to anyone else, and see the world. I have every right to make friends that aren’t those I grew up with. I have every right to be me because, whether people like it or not, THIS IS ME! Not the person that hid herself away and made herself sicker, but this woman who longs to be challenged, to explore and to make a difference, however small.

We ALL deserve to have the life we dream for ourselves. The only person that can hold us back from getting it, is us!  And if someone doesn’t like it, readers? Well. That’s not our problem – it’s theirs.

So I ask this of everyone reading this article: I ask that you choose happy. I ask that you choose you.

Londoner to the core, G. K. Sihat has always been madly in love with the written word. Although she specialises in fiction writing, she’ll find any excuse to get words onto paper. When she’s not writing, you can find her standing, awestruck, in front of some masterful piece of art, curled up in bed binging on The Mindy Project or walking through the streets of London with her headphones in and a Vanilla Latte in her hands.