joy.

I love cocooning myself in my bed. I love my leopard print slippers. I love the color orange. I love paisley and zebra print. I especially love giraffes and my puppy, Lucy. I love all the Harry Potter books and movies. I love polka dots and sunshine. When I am outdoors, nothing can distract me from, well, distraction. I love skipping almost as much as I love dancing. I love music. I love singing. I love closing my eyes so I can focus on listening to the sounds of life. I hug people really tight! I love totally mushy movies, and yes, they do make me cry. I love the way people laugh and seeing faces (and even bodies sometimes) explode into giggles. I cry in public quite often, especially if I’m reading a really good book. I love smiling. I love smiling at people. I love seeing people smile—the real, genuine kind of smile that lights up a face. I love my peacock feather earrings, panties that make me feel cute and sexy all at once, and sandals. I love big earrings. I love when people look, well, off; you know, like something isn’t quite right but you can’t put your finger on what it is. I love messy hair and bracelets. I love nail polish. I love oversized cardigans and dark chocolate. I love wine and reeses. I get bored of my hair easily, love tattoos and pearl earrings. I love playing my music really loudly and pretending that I am creating a music video in front of the mirror. I love people. I love my family. I love seeing love in other people’s eyes—like watching my sister and brother-in-law look at each other or watching someone I’ve never even met look at their child. Sometimes when I laugh I lose control of my body and make extremely spastic movements. I love scarves. I love human hands. I love books, poems and kissing trees. I love huge sunglasses that practically cover my face. I like my feet a lot. I love ribbons and digging my feet into the sand at the beach. I love cooking and baking and tea! I don’t like using a top sheet, but I do like extraordinary amounts of blankets and pillows. I love colors—all the colors in the world! I drink a hell of a lot of coffee. I love doodling; I love quotes and song lyrics that inspire me. I usually have a mantra that gets me through each day. I think everyone has an aura of vibes they give out and I love tie-dyeing so that I can visually represent people’s auras! I love ice cream and peanut butter and black olives. I enjoy cheese a lot, too. I am weirdly flexible. I love spinning and I love yoga. I wish I ran more often. When I walk, I like to walk extraordinarily slow. I like to touch people. A lot—that way they know how much I love them.

There was a time in my life during which I lost touch of all these little joys—for that matter, I lost touch of the big joys, too. I was hurting so badly, I didn’t notice the sunshine and I forgot to appreciate people’s smiles or fits of giggles. There were days that deciding what to eat for dinner seemed so unbearably difficult that I would curl up on the couch or the floor and cry. I hit rock bottom.

In my healing process, I focused on what had brought me to this point and tried to reflect on my life, learn to love myself more deeply and make time to care for myself each and every day; my healing focused on the deep issues that had dragged me into depression. Lately, though, I realized that the deep sense of happiness and love I now feel have opened my eyes once more to all of the little things that surround me that make me smile uncontrollably. Being this joyful may make me spastically enthusiastic or even over-zealous… maybe even borderline creepy as my eyes pop out of my face and I wear a permanent grin, but, to be completely honest, I wouldn’t have it any other way because it is genuinely me—mt