Creative Nonfiction: My Happy Place

By Victoria Smee

With my family, that’s my happy place. I hated them, I hated them all. Blamed them for every bad thing in my life, about me, around me.

Life in my teens was torture. I could never wait to grow. To escape. To be free of every one who tortured me.  Music from back then is my happy place. The age of torment, my fondest memories. When I’m in pain, its my happy place.

Explain to me why? Now I sit cramped in a metal flying machine. The stewardess walks by with her overpriced wares. It’s the most excitement we’ve had in the past 8 hours. This is not joyful, this is pain. Can’t move my arms, legs are locked in front. So tired, but the sleep can’t come. I sit in agonised boredom waiting for my happy place.

I haven’t attempted suicide in 24 years. My family and friends, it was all your fault, my school mates, you did this to me. So why are you my happy place.

My grandparents died; I’d never felt loss before. I didn’t believe in death, I’d never seen it, how could it be real? Death was make believe.

The pain was real, the missing piece of my heart. Grief is the price we pay for love. I sit in their former home. Uncles, cousins sprawled around. My whole family together. I watch the kids play, I remember when we were the kids. Now I sit as the parents, my grandparents are gone, another generation slips by. We find comfort in each other. Grief is agony, so why is this my happy place.

My life hung in tatters, painting the town red in my apartment alone. I can see all the people; you did this to me. You are why my hair lays greasy. My red teeth unbrushed. Dressed in last weeks clothes. My job is imaginary while I fly away inside my apartment. You’re all to blame. I miss you; you’re are my happy place.

We’ll all be together again one day, we’ll be the grandparents, we’ll grieve and I’ll grow a new happy place.

The plane lands and now your close, I fight to get off and walk tunnels, corridors that never end. Then you’re there, you’re all there. You wait for the child who hated you. The one that blamed you for everything. The one who hated you for never loving me. That’s why I’m like this Why didn’t you love me? My mind screams when I’m alone.

Here you are everyone. All who never cared, waiting for me, hugging me. I’ve never seen you so happy as when you’re seeing me. This is my happy place.

How do you fix a broken life when you are alone. People are my happy place. I see that now. All the days I spend alone, locked away, painting the town red, in my apartment alone, I punish myself. Why do I do that. When nothing is my fault. Its everyone else’s. Why must I suffer, I cry. Tears fall silent when there’s no one to hear. No one to care. I’m all alone always have been.

Here we are embracing, loving one another. I miss you; I love you. My people my happy place, I don’t ever want to let you go.

Life isn’t here, and I must go, I’ll miss you people who never loved me. As I fly in the sky, cramped hours take me away. I don’t want to go. Don’t make me go.

Victoria Smee is an outreach worker who writes in her spare time. She has enjoyed writing all of her life, and has recently started to make more time for her short stories and poetry.