Happiness is a Choice

As I have mentioned before, there are many more things that aggravate me than there are things that make me happy. It’s possible that I’m just someone who’s got it all together and who is so happy in general that small aggravations have little trouble standing out (that theory: courtesy of my dear mother).

Whatever the case, I got really mad today. Someone just failed to do something, and when I called them on it they spit it back on my face saying they had no reason to apologize for it.

I was destroyed. I hate conflict and I have a REALLY hard time getting over it. However, if there is one thing I know about men, is that they get over things five times as fast as women do. If I could mimic a man, and just pretended like the whole thing never happened, I knew “we” would be fine. But HOW was I supposed to do that WHEN I HAD SMOKE COMING OUT OF MY EARS???? The dramatic woman in me wanted to just BURST out and tell him off… but I didn’t.

I suddenly remembered a line from last week’s episode of Monk (USA network): “Happiness is a Choice.” I could choose to be miserable, or choose to get on with my life. As awesome as it feels to make yourself the victim of a situation and be as self-righteous as humanly possible, I had the feeling that happiness would get me a longer way.

So I repeated it like a mantra: Happiness is a Choice, Happiness is a Choice, Happiness is a Choice. Afterwards, everything was fine on his end. He must have thought I was so over it. I definitely put on a good show, but I have to say that the mantra just didn’t work. I’m as mad now, 5 hours later, as I was when it first happened.

Fighting it out, or visibly showing how upset I was would have just planted on me the labels of “emotional,” “immature,” and “drama queen.” There is just no point in trying to get my feelings understood in that situation. No point whatsoever. So I just pretend it all away. And yes, I do find myself doing this a lot, and it makes me resent my friends for putting me in that position (yes, like it’s their responsibility to baby me through my anger spurts).

Do you have issues getting over things, too? Do you feel resentful when you have to put on a show to appease someone else whose feelings appear to be more important than yours?

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