Why am I still unhappy ?

I always believed that if I lost weight, if I graduated, if I got a boyfriend, if I got a job… I would be happy. But guess what? I’m not.

I got everything I wanted but I always find an excuse. I always need more. I have a job but no more free time, I’ve lost weight but I still think I’m too fat, etc.

I am the definition of seeing the glass as half empty.

I’m always coming up with new excuses, things that would make me really happy if I had them, like I’d only be really happy if I achieved these goals. But the problem is that I’ve already achieved my goals from 1-2 years ago and at the time I thought I’d be happy if I achieved these objectives but I didn’t, and yet I still hold on to this belief. It’s like I never learn.

When I was a teenager I wanted to have a boyfriend because all the popular girls either had boyfriends or just boy friends. I had neither. Before I was a teenager I had almost only boy friends but that changed as I got older where I only had two or three friends and, to be honest, I was quite happy with that because I really like to have some alone time at home, and even with a few friends I sometimes feel overwhelmed when they want to go out every day. But I felt that if I wasn’t happy it was because I didn’t have any friends.

About the boyfriend issue, I had already had a few flirts but never a real boyfriend until I was 21 and I was a bit ashamed of that, I didn’t understand why I didn’t have any boyfriends. Was I ugly? I know now that it was because I was very shy and every time I flirted with a boy I was afraid to take it to the next level, so I was ghosting.

Then I got a boyfriend (we’re still together) and for a while I was very happy, I just wanted to spend time with him and everything was great. But then I started to feel depressed again. I told myself it was because I was afraid of not graduating (and yes, I was really afraid of not graduating) and I thought that if I graduated, everything would be fine, I would be happier than ever… yeah, that didn’t happen. After I graduated, I was afraid I would never get a job… when I got a job, I was afraid I would spend all my years working until I die and I was very afraid I wouldn’t enjoy my life because of work.

The pursuit of happiness

What I’m trying to say is that I’m pursuing happiness, when there is no such thing. You don’t just become happy, just as you don’t just become sad. These are emotions that you feel, and it’s impossible to be only happy.

My problem is that I am so focused on the future that I cannot enjoy the present moment. I am constantly afraid of the future. I know I am like this because of my education. It’s not my parents’ fault at all, because they had that education themselves. I think that because my grandparents experienced poverty, they passed on beliefs to my parents, who themselves experienced poverty as children. Anyway, this is also a very interesting subject that I have been discussing and reading a lot about.

So to conclude, why am I still unhappy? Because I’m not in the present moment enough, and I don’t realise how lucky I am to have this life.