I know it would be a fairly easy assumption that the title of this journal entry means I'm going to be depressing and more of how I've been in the past despite saying I wouldn't be last time. But that isn't what I'm aiming for. I'm in more of a contemplative mood.

I've been thinking about happiness. What is it? Or rather, what is true happiness, and contentment with life. I've been happy before, but only for brief amounts of time. It's far more transitional and fleeting than the kind of overall glow I've seen in other people. I never seem to be able to hold onto it for more than, at most, a few short hours at a time. Things I do to try and attain some measure of it always seem to go wrong and have the opposite effect in the long term. This doesn't seem very fair. I am a cynical and somewhat bitter individual, prone to near-constant stress and anxiety, but I've somehow managed to keep a certain amount of hope going in a quiet corner of my brain, contrary to how I normally act and feel and despite events in my life. I can't explain it, but it's always there. A small part of my mind holds a vigil for eventual happiness and satisfaction.

One way I know I'm not happy, is that I am lonely. This is not the same as being alone. I can quite comfortably not be around people for extended periods of time, and often prefer to be, more so than I prefer the company of others. But I still desire and require a counterpart; an equal. On an intellectual and emotional level, who I can be comfortable with and share things with. Contrary to the movies, and what your parents, society and your inbuilt genetic imperative might tell you as you're growing up, love is not happiness. Or at least, it isn't necessarily. In fact, it seems to be more about pain from my limited experience. Every relationship where I have developed some degree of love, be it familial, romantic, friendship, or even for an idea or inanimate object. It seems to consist of more pain than happiness. I loved my father, despite his abuses, and despite my anger over them. I love my mother and sister, though they are usually a source of considerable shame, frustration, and again anger. I fell in love with a beautiful but similarly unhappy young woman, but she was unable to reciprocate the emotion and in my desperate frustration, and to my infinite regret, I managed to drive her away from me. As I have similarly driven away, or been driven away by or even just drifted away from most of the friends I've had.

A particularly worrying thought is that the majority of those seem to become happy once away from me, or find happiness and that's when they suddenly leave. The young woman, who I still constantly think about and care about regardless of what happened and didn't happen between us, has recently found a degree of happiness, or at least contentment. Her life has become infinitely improved, academically, professionally, and personally since she stopped spending time or talking with me. And I'm glad for her, because she deserves for things to go right for her for once. I mean that sincerely. But I'm also jealous, and sad that I couldn't be a part of it. Which in turn bothers me with how selfish that seems. And even though she was unhappy before I met her, that she couldn't be happy until I wasn't around worries me. Similarly, my best friend, at least I consider him my best friend, got married this year and it's obvious to anyone even in passing that he's high as a kite. But I've barely seen him since his wedding, and I barely saw him during it either. I was there, but I wasn't really a part of it, but on the periphery observing from a distance. I wanted to be more involved, but couldn't find a way to be. Now, I realise that any newly wed is going to be more concerned with the excitement of a new chapter of their life having started than with spending time with their friends. But I can't help feeling as though gradually he's not going to be around for more than very occasional and brief moments from now on, each time with our friendship having cooled and lost coherency a little more. I don't want it to, but I don't see what I can do. Or know that I should do anything. Wouldn't it be very selfish to impose my problems and anxieties on his happiness? All I know is that I seem to be a common link in what sucks in the lives of those closest to me, or periods of time when things don't seem to be going that well for them. And I don't know why, and it isn't a problem that I'm equipped to analyse and correct. I'm better with machines than people. But machines aren't a replacement for even the limited human interaction I need.

Happiness also isn't money or material possessions, but I've known that for a long time. It hasn't stopped me filling the limited space available to me with all manner of supposed entertainment devices, games, or DVDs. They amuse me for a time, and they can distract me from things, but they don't make me happy.

Music and comedy are two things that can make me forget that I'm not happy for a time, and are both very important to me. I might go so far as to say that I am passionately attached to them. But they don't last, and when they finish I'm almost immediately maudlin and depressed again, no matter how much I convinced myself whilst they were ongoing that I felt better.

I used to feel the way I do about music and humour with prose. I used to love reading and spent most of my childhood with my head in a book, lost to my surroundings. And I loved writing. I was also told by people that I was very good at it, and I dreamt of having a career telling stories that could entertain, amuse, intrigue, and move people. But I don't seem to be able to do that. I lost confidence in what I was writing, and in my own talents. Constantly questioning whether I was any good or not until I became convinced I was shit, and now rarely write at all because of the frustration and disillusionment I get from it. It's also ruined reading for me, because now all I can think about when I read a book is how I failed to write one.

Perhaps happiness is not absolute. Different for everyone, based on their personalities, and experiences. But despite having had a difficult life, I know other people who have been through worse and still managed to be happy, so that can't be the problem. Maybe it's just me? Perhaps I'm incapable of being happy? That can't be it either, because I wasn't always like this. I used to be the exact opposite of what I've become, until I was about 8 years old. I used to be trusting, gregarious, loving, innocent, imaginative. I had a lot of friends. What went wrong? Surely that child couldn't have been so utterly transformed simply because of my father? He was always violent, from the earliest part of my life. It can't be the sole blame of my poor health, or my mental problems or autism either, because those have always been there to some extent too. So have the endless vivid nightmares at night and resulting insomnia, and the fears of being alone, of death, of rejection, of arachnids. Yes, as minor and ridiculous as it sounds, a fear of spiders is helping to ruin my life. I'm constantly on edge and worried about them and looking around at corners and the floor and walls for them, even though they can't actually hurt me. I haven't eaten today because last night I saw a massive one on my kitchen floor and now can't go in there, and I've only drank anything by taking a bottle and a glass into my bedroom. I'm not going to be able to use that kitchen again either until it comes out again when someone else is there and removes it. Because it has crawled off out of sight too, I'm nervous about being downstairs at all, and have only left my room, the one place I know it isn't, to go to the bathroom. I've been staring at the crack under the door for signs of it coming in. In fact, the only reason I'm able to think about all of this objectively and with some sang-froid is that the stress and anxiety of the last day has completely burnt out my emotions. I'm too stressed to be depressed. What the fuck is wrong with me? And how do I change it?

With everything that's happened, and everything that bothers me, there is still the small child I used to be lost somewhere in my head, holding out a tiny beacon of hope. I'm not sure though that I can find him before that torch goes out entirely and leaves him utterly consumed by the dark. I'm not sure that I even want him there at all, as hope just provides more opportunities for pain and disappointment. But he won't let me give up on him yet, though nothing it seems can help him. Hope, so I'm told, rides alone.