As a matter of temperament, I don’t smile often in normal situations. I’m always kind, pleasant, and such, but if you were to judge how happy I was from my instagram, you’d send me to jail to prevent problems.
However, it’s not that I’m unhappy; most days, I’m fine. However, it takes a lot to make me smile or laugh because that’s overflow for me. When I say overflow, I mean to say that the joy is always there, but it takes something special to bring so much of it to the fore that it gets expressed physically.
Sometimes, it’s a phone call, a letter, a text message, a hug from a friend. Most times? It’s being lost in nature for a few hours without a drop of signal or talking to someone that speaks my language on all levels or listening to the ocean crashing against the shores like an applauding multitude.
I suppose that I’m in awe of the world at large, but the one that I live in day-to-day rarely sparks my interest except in small spurts. I wonder what you call that. I wonder what the word is for that.
Whatever it is, that’s why I’m always on a plane or in a car whenever the word vacation happens. My city is like a 5th-grade t-shirt; I was able to wear mine into my early 20s.
That’s OK. I think that’s the thing for me: even if no one understands my melancholy or my joy, I’m comfortable enough with both to not need additional approval of it. While I sit with them, I imagine places larger and farther away from here where I can write and dance and just be.