“If you happy I’m happy”

It’s crazy how a brief exchange of words can cause a greater impact than the sender probably intended…

“If you happy I’m happy”

Those five words made sense as the response to the preceding text, as we were discussing a decision I had made regarding a project we had worked on.  You would think I would have just said “ok” and allowed this part of the text thread to become nothing more than a soon to be forgotten memory.

But oddly enough, that’s not the way that things played out… 

You see, those five words abandoned their mundane task of being a statement of agreeance and decided to take on the more aggressive role of becoming an x-ray.  Yes, an x-ray.  An x-ray that felt it necessary to expose this desire that I keep trying to suppress.  And it happened so quickly that I had to set my phone down and regroup before responding, because it completely caught me off guard. 

Like why did my heart instantly feel this sting after reading those words?  It didn’t make sense when taking into consideration the context of the conversation.  Nevertheless, this whole interaction is something that has just stuck with me…

“If you happy I’m happy”

Now I want to make sure you track with me correctly, so here’s a little bit of background information…

I am single.  And though once upon a time I was married, I have been divorced for almost 13 years.

Believe what you want about me based on that information, because I know that’s a long time to remain single.  And truth be told there have been a few “situationships” over the years, and perhaps a man or two that I had a genuine interest in.  But nothing panned out to be a relationship, and I have been pretty content in my singleness…   

I mean let’s be real, relationships are a lot of work.  And after all the chaos that surrounded my marriage, I have enjoyed not having to consider anyone else’s needs or wants as I move and breathe and raise my kids.  Not to mention the fact that, the level of vulnerability needed to sustain that type of intimate relationship makes me nervous (though that’s probably more so based on my experiences with trying to hop back down the rabbit hole of relationships after my divorce…)

So as I said, I am content in my singleness…

And while there is some truth to that statement, I’d be lying if I told you that I want to stay single for the rest of my life, because I don’t.  And there are many times that I think about the fact that I do desire to share my life with someone.  More times than I care to admit.  But oftentimes when the desire to enter a relationship tries to bubble to the surface, I suppress it and tell myself that I am content in my singleness…

So now that you have that background information, let’s hop back forward in time, and hop back to the moment when I received that text…

As I said earlier, when I read, “if you happy I’m happy”, those words had nothing to do with the project we had worked on.  And I realize those words stung because they revealed to me that I have been suppressing my desire to be in a relationship, and hiding behind the lie that “I am content in my singleness” because I do not truly believe that I will ever have a loving relationship where my man genuinely wants the best for me, and would potentially say “If you happy I’m happy”…

The bunny trails that my mind tend to wander on lately are quite fascinating…

But as I said in the beginning, it’s crazy how a brief exchange of words can cause a greater impact than the sender probably intended…