  Every death feels a little bit like you're living in a snowglobe. The snow is nice and settled and then something comes along and shakes it all up. The more it is shaken the longer the snow takes to settle. And the pieces never fall in the same place again. I learn something new and change a little bit more every time someone dies. Yesterday, standing in the church looking over the sea of family I found some peace.
Later on the way back from the movies with urlLink serp , I realised why I remain, as urlLink Shrike once put it, relentlessly cheerful. Cheerful dispositions get mistaken for many things, and with good reason. Once in frustration, I asked urlLink serp why what has become my nature is so often met with smug cynicism and patronisation. He pointed out that we are constantly bombarded with happy empty media, joy over washing detergent, hyperreal smiles over chocolate bars. And children are always happy because they have not yet had those experiences that make them cautious and unhappy. I am neither of those things.
We talked about people who were permanently unhappy with everything and who let the slightest things upset them. We put it down to a lack of life experience, or more notably a lack of trauma! It sounds strange. Before my Dad died I was part of the cynical throng, the overtly serious sort of person who saw all the bad in the world, who let a look or a word ruin her day. Even for a while after he died I remained that way - no one changes overnight and I was angry for a long time. I wouldn't wish the knowledge I had been given from that event on anyone.
It changes your world. It changes you until you don't know who you are in your own skin, and you have to figure it out all over again with this new information. All those sad, angry things in your past can turn you into one of two things. You can be a victim or a student. I was given the choice of remaining cynical and angry, safe in my knowledge that I knew 'The Truth' or I could take the much harder path of treating every single new event individually and learning from it. It's so easy to be cynical and angry!
It's so safe there, they become such familiar emotions - and then you get a taste of happiness which is so fleeting than when it goes away you feel as though it will never come back. I have so many experiences in my life. The bad ones seem to stand out sometimes. The good ones are far more subtle, and far more likely to be taken for granted. But I had the choice. So I remain cheerful, not as any sort of payback to the bad, but because I know what happens in my every day life is nothing compared to those past bad experiences.
I have a benchmark if you will. It's not from a lack of knowledge of experience that I'm happy most of the time. It's from a great depth of knowledge and experience that tells me that it's my life now to do with as I wish. I survived those bad experiences and now I'm graced with the knowledge that everything will be okay, even when things feel like they're not. Nothing ever upsets me too deeply because things have been so much worse in my life that all those little annoyances, I am happy to say, make me laugh. I am happy to have those small annoyances!
If that's as bad as my life is then I am so, so lucky. I'm happy that I get to wake up and be alive and eat breakfast and be warm. I'm happy that I am unrestrained and no one is mistreating me. These past few years are the best I've ever had it and I'm so grateful. I have so many reasons to be cheerful. None come from stupidity or childishness, although I see now how it can be taken that way.
I have learned in my life what some don't learn in their lifetime. I had to go to hell and back to learn it, and I still will never wish it on anyone. But once again I've been shaken up and the snow is settling now into a new pattern; I feel like another door has been opened for me and my gratitude increases onwards. 
