98. Happy…to be wrong

"I'll never love again . . ." 

"It's not possible for me to ever be that happy again. . . " 

"My life is over - I've already had the best this world has to offer, and I lost it all before the age of twenty-three . . . "

These were all phrases that became a crutch for me after I lost Jon, a fall-back when life got hard.  Bad things would happen, some of which had nothing to do with Jon, and I crumbled because I thought I had been through enough and couldn't take any more heartache or adversity.  I sometimes used what had happened to Jon and I as an excuse to fall apart in situations where I probably could have been stronger or made better decisions because everything just seemed so inherently unfair - life doesn't give a shit about my happiness, I thought, so why should I care about doing the right thing or aspiring to great things when it doesn't really matter anyway?  I could cure cancer and then get hit by a bus the next day . . . you can call it karma, or maybe it's just another example of our complete and utter inability to exert any control over the things that really matter - things like people . . .  and love.  Those are the things we cherish at the end of the day, and those are the heartaches that cut the deepest.  Even when things finally started to get a little better, I was still, at best, treading water.  I fought just to keep my head above the surface, and I'd resigned myself to getting by for the rest of my days without true love in my life.

That was then.  This is now.  Finally, there is something to live for, something greater than myself.  My friends and family were right - I can be happy again, and it doesn't have to look the same as it did before for it to be just as good.  In fact, it might even be better now that I have a far deeper and more informed appreciation for what matters in this life.  It's not as simple as "I'm a good person and, therefore, good things happen to me."  It's also not as straightforward as "I did a bad thing, and now I deserve to be punished."  Bad things happen to good people.  They happen all the time.  It doesn't work in that tit-for-tat manner to which we often cling when we seek an explanation for the inexplicable.  We like that model because it's logical and coherent . . . but that would imply there is some logic or coherence to life, and there simply is not.  It's taken me over six years to get that through my stubborn skull, but I think I finally understand that it's true.

Today I find myself living in a great country that believes in things like freedom and equality.  I'm healthy, and I have a promising career ahead of me.  I have a supportive family and wonderful friends who put up with me, even when I feel like I'm too busy to breathe.  I'm almost done with the law degree that's now taken nearly eight years to complete from start to finish.  The Captain Jonathan D. Grassbaugh Veterans Project officially has clients.  People seem to want to tell the story of how I got to this point, and they smile with happiness at what represents a "good news story," rare though those are in the media these days.

Most importantly, I am desperately head-over-heels in love with a wonderful man who treats me like the most important person in the world.  He makes me laugh like a hyena and has this uncanny way of finishing my thoughts before I can even get the words out.  Whenever things get a little rough, he reaches over to squeeze my hand, and on the mornings we're not physically together, he makes it a point to wake up first so that I always have a sweet "good morning" message waiting for me.  He tells me every day how happy he is to have met me - in Afghanistan, of all places.  It doesn't get much better than that, and for all those things I am most grateful.  I literally get chills when I think about how lucky I am.  I've never been so happy to say that I'm glad I was wrong - happiness after heartache is possible.  In fact, this kind of happiness is perhaps the best kind of happiness because it's the result of slogging through a whole lot of bad to get back to what's good.

If you look up the definition of happiness, it's described as a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions, ranging from contentment to intense joy.  If you ask me, though, it's so much more.  It's mental, emotional, and everything in between.  It's hard work, it's perseverance, and it's often the product of blood, sweat, and, ironically, tears.  I'm just happy to say that, for me, far more of those tears are happy ones these days.  There will be more challenges and more adversity, I'm sure.  There will be other times when I feel like the world has turned against me and refuses to cut me some slack.  But when these things happen, I'll try to remind myself to smile and recognize that this too shall pass.  The happiness that comes after the storm is well worth all the rain.