the ache of happiness

for the ones who mistake calm for foreshadowing

there are days i wake up and nothing is wrong. there’s no fire to put out, no apology already rehearsing itself in my mouth. the room is quiet, in the way only certain mornings know how to be. this quiet hangs like clean linen, soft, uncreased, almost too pristine to trust. even the light seems unsure of itself, folding into corners, slipping across the floor like it’s afraid to touch anything too loudly. there is no alarm. no raised voice. nothing pressing.

and still, unease hums beneath the skin. a flicker in the chest. a tightening in the jaw. like calm is a costume i haven’t quite grown into. like something is wrong because nothing is. stillness becomes suspicion. the calm feels borrowed. so i check for the trapdoor. prepare for the drop.

there’s a grief that comes with safety, the kind that doesn’t know what to do with itself now that there’s nothing left to brace against. a soft confusion in the bones. a body still scanning for exits when no one is chasing. the ache of standing in a safe room while every cell inside you believes it’s still a battlefield.

joy isn’t simple when your history taught you it doesn’t stay. it becomes complicated. it doesn’t land like truth, it lands like bait.

calm isn’t comforting, it’s loaded. it’s the house where everyone says we’re fine, but nothing has felt fine in years. it’s the quiet that follows the moment you finally stand up for yourself, and immediately regret it. it’s when they make space for you just long enough to weaponise it. the hallway where every step lands too evenly. the eerie peace that follows an argument that didn’t end, just tucked itself beneath the surface. the silence at the dinner table where no one meets anyone’s eyes. the way someone gets quiet just before they disappear. the breath you take before the slam. the second before the glass breaks.

i know better than to meet that kind of calm with both feet. not when i’ve learned how fast it can turn.

i think i was maybe six. maybe younger. lying outside with colours or pencils or clouds, drawing or reading alone, before vigilance replaced wonder. the softest version of me lived there. but she didn’t stay long. by the time i was twelve, i already felt grown. already fluent in deflection. already good at being good. joy felt like something childish. something i couldn’t afford anymore. a language i used to speak but couldn’t trust. like opening the windows in a house you know won’t survive the wind.

i think i was six the last time i truly belonged to myself.

now, even in softness, even when nothing’s wrong, i catch myself tensing. when someone walks into the room. when things are too quiet. when i’m sitting still for too long. like calm is a performance i’m failing. and joy is something i need to justify.

your nervous system doesn’t ask for proof. it asks for patterns. it knows when the sky looks too blue. when the stillness is too clean. when kindness starts to taste like confusion. it reads the breath between sentences. the silence behind someone’s eyes. it listens with skin, with heartbeats, with the tightness that arrives before you even know why.

this is neuroception, the body’s reflexive pattern-detection system, constantly scanning for signs of danger or safety, often beneath your awareness. and if your nervous system has learned that joy is almost always a setup, it won’t meet safety with trust. it will meet it with bracing. it waits for what usually came next. peace, to a body built in aftermath, feels like a dare.

it’s not that you don’t want joy. it’s that your body once touched joy and was burned. it flinches not because it doubts the light, but because it still smells the smoke. it leaves the door open, just in case. peace, to a body shaped by unpredictability, doesn’t feel like rest, it feels like a countdown. like sitting on a chair that’s about to tip. you do not hate joy. you do not want to ruin it. you’re just living with a body that remembers what it meant to be unprepared.

predictive processing theory tells us the brain is always trying to stay ahead. it builds internal models of what the world is supposed to do next, based on your past. but trauma interrupts that learning loop. instead of updating the model with new, safe experiences, the brain clings to old predictions. it mistakes quiet for foreshadowing. joy for the start of the fall. this is the part where everything usually goes wrong, it says. this is what it felt like right before you lost it last time. so it urges caution. mistrusts joy, not because it’s wrong, but because grieving its disappearance hurts more. better to flinch early than be caught unprepared. the brain isn’t sabotaging you. it’s just misreading the script it was handed too many times before. and until the pattern changes, until safety stops being the plot twist, it keeps playing it safe.

and so we sabotage joy. quietly. strategically. subconsciously. we learn how to sidestep it in ways so subtle they look like habits. we apologise for laughing just a bit too loud. we pull away when someone gets too close. we lower the volume of our joy before anyone else gets the chance to mute it. we brush off the compliment before it can settle in our chest. we stay half-present, just in case it’s taken. we micromanage the moment. we downplay good news so no one can call us naive. we imagine being left while we’re still being held. we call it protecting our peace. but really, we are bracing for the turn. not because we don’t want to arrive, but because arrival means we could lose it. and some of us were raised to stay on the road. to keep our bags packed. to always leave the door cracked open, just in case.

yet despite this, some hearts don’t harden. they adapt. they evolve. they become moss, soft earth, soil. they keep growing, even in shade. they hold memory. they hold moisture. and they open not through force, but through instinct. like roots splitting stone. like leaves uncurling toward light. they refill slowly, after the drought, after the silence, after the long stretch of surviving. they glow green when the light finds them. we find this not in the breakthrough, but in the in-between. in the hands we don’t pull away from. in the arms we don’t leave too soon. in the kindness we don’t deflect. in the compliments we don’t disprove.

interoception is your brain’s way of sensing your internal landscape, breath, heart rate, gut feeling, the hum behind your ribs. the subtle signals that shape your sense of safety. these signals don’t just tell you how to feel. they shape what you feel. and when trauma disrupts the connection between sensation and safety, those signals become unreliable. love feels like a test with no right answer. joy is a room with too many exits. rest is the quiet before the floor gives way.

interoception is your internal compass. it points to what your body believes about the world. and that compass can be re-tuned. not with logic, but with repetition. with presence. with practice.

every time you stay inside a moment that doesn’t hurt, when you feel grateful and don’t look over your shoulder, when you feel seen and don’t apologise for it, when you let the compliment land, when you let the warmth linger, when you feel joy and don’t interrupt it, you’re sending your nervous system new data. new evidence. you’re saying, you’re safe now. this is okay to feel.

scientists call this expanding your window of tolerance, the range of emotional states your body can hold without slipping into fight, flight, or freeze. it’s not about thinking positive. it’s about offering your body enough lived experience to trust that joy isn’t a trick. and the more gently you stay, without force, without performance, the more your nervous system begins to believe you.

healing is not intensity. it’s consistency.

research shows that practising gratitude rewires the brain. it strengthens interoceptive awareness. it anchors you in the body, pulling your attention away from imagined threat and back into what’s actually here. for a nervous system trained to brace, gratitude becomes a kind of gentle re-patterning. and when we feel grateful, we tend to stay with joy longer. not because the fear is gone, but because the good is finally visible.

this is what joy looks like after ruin. small. steady. unassuming. and still here.

you don’t have to force it. that’s not the point. you just have to stay a little longer. let it stretch you. let it feel strange. notice the part of you that wants to leave. and say, i see you. but we’re safe now.

the miracle isn’t that we feel joy. it’s that we let ourselves keep it. don’t believe anyone who tells you joy is easy. they’ve never held it with shaking hands.

sometimes, without warning, i feel it. when i’m sitting by a window and the sunlight is soft. when i’m walking home and the breeze doesn’t ask anything of me. when i’m near water and the light is doing that thing it does, shimmering like it’s never known how to be anything but kind. and something in me goes still. not from fear. from presence. it’s not loud. it’s not euphoric. it’s not the kind of joy we’re taught to chase. it’s quieter than that. a kind of soft awe. it’s not performative. it’s not perfect. i feel grateful, not just for the peace, but for the fact that i can feel it now. for the fact that i didn’t shut down so completely that joy became unreachable. for the version of me that stayed long enough to meet herself again.

the girl who covered her cries with a pillow. who memorised the weather inside people before she ever noticed the sky. who held her breath when someone paused too long between words. who folded herself into something easy to carry, just in case someone decided to put her down. she would be so, so proud. of this body, unbraced, breathing. of these feet, planted, steady. of this life that holds softness and stillness without collapse.

you didn’t get here by accident. you stayed. through the kindness that made you flinch. through the joy that felt like a warning sign. through the calm that felt too clean to trust. you stayed even when everything inside you wanted to run. when your nervous system whispered this is too much. when the silence felt unbearable. when the good felt suspicious. and that, that is the work. not fixing yourself. not becoming someone else. just staying long enough to offer your body new evidence. to uncouple joy from harm. to show it, over and over, that not all light will burn. that not all softness disappears.

and slowly, joy becomes less like a cliff. more like ground. something you can stand on. something you can return to. again and again.

i hope you let yourself feel proud. for staying with yourself through the hardest parts. for not giving up on your own capacity to feel good. for not turning cold, even when the world gave you every reason to. it takes a particular kind of courage to keep your heart soft. to still offer warmth after being burned. to let the fire die and still believe in the match.

not everyone will see that work. not everyone has to. some joys are private. some healing lives in conversations only you and your past self know how to have.

you don’t have to hold joy like it’s some fragile, precious thing that might shatter if you look away. you don’t have to perform it. you don’t have to explain it. you just have to let it feel real when it arrives. even if it’s quiet. even if it’s brief. even if it catches you off guard.

joy doesn’t have to last forever to mean something. it just has to be allowed to exist.

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