Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
It was 1983. I was in the lift at work, going to the fourth floor. The lift stopped at second. A guy got in. I recognised him from Happy Hour, where I spent most hours on Fridays after work, making people laugh along with me at random, happy, drunken things.
I was depressed. A condition I hid well, but this guy caught me unawares. “What’s up with you? You’re always so happy,” he said. Fuck you, I wanted to say back, but instead, laughed. Nothing wrong with me, buddy. Get outta here! (Can’t a girl be unhappy? Can’t a girl have a bad day? A bad month? Perhaps a bad life?)
“No Happy Hour today,” I said with fake cheer. The lift stopped at my floor. I got out.
Fuck him. Fuck the lot of them. I don’t have to be happy all the time. It’s not my job to keep people laughing, smiling, wishing we were best friends, soothing their hurts, reassuring their married selves that all was okay back at home with their triple fronted brick veneer, 2.5 children and dog.
Yes, I can be happy, and often I am. I have what many would say was a ‘happy disposition’, but there’s a dark side to the happiness, a yin to my yang. A misery to my mastery.
I’ve had times of being so happy that I’ve felt I could fly. Surely fly. I imagine being the bird, sailing across the valley, riding the breeze, seeing the world from above; soaring, soaring. But I’ve also had more than my fair share of times of utter despair. Times of thinking that dying was the only way out of the bleakness, the never ending-ness of the grind of the day, and the slow, trough of night.
So yes, it’s true I often laugh. It’s true I can often make other people laugh. I even make myself laugh. But right now, in this time and space, all is not well in the house of Fiona.
Right now, my happy face is a lie. A farce.
Right now, the happy girl has gone.
I want my cartwheels back. I want happy me back.
I want way more than a happy hour.