H - Happiness

“Stop searching forever. Happiness is just next to you.” Allison read the little slip of paper slowly as she munched on the fortune cookie. She looked next to her. Lisa was a good friend. But happiness? She was starting to think she’d never be happy again.

”What’s your fortune say?” Lisa interrupted her thoughts.

“Never mind.”

“That bad?”

“Apparently you are the key to my happiness. No pressure or anything,” Allison tried to make a joke.

”Well, mine says a million bucks is going to drop out of thin air. Oh, come on, Al. What’s wrong? I mean, I know you’re going through a lot, but I thought this is what you wanted,” Lisa said.

Allison sipped on her coke and shrugged. “I thought it was. I was miserable with Brett. I’ve been wanting to leave for awhile now. I thought I’d be, well, free. He was making me so unhappy. I don’t understand. Right now it feels like I’ll never be happy again. I just don’t get it.”

”Divorce is never easy. It’s an adjustment. Change is always hard,” Lisa told her.

She knew Lisa was trying to help, but the words felt hollow. Lisa didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand because Allison herself didn’t understand why she felt so sad, so lonely, and so awful. Maybe she had made a big mistake. That was the worst part. She had been so eager to be free from her miserable marriage. She just knew that she’d be happy if she could get away from him. From feeling stuck. That’s all she was trying to do. To be happy again. And now she had this horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach. She feared that she had made the worst mistake of her life.