First of all what am I doing? Why am I doing this? Am I going to regret in the morning once the wine has worn off? The truth is, I don’t know, but I need to stop stressing out. My life is like a constant hazard light that I turn on in every kind of situation. There are the flats on the highway, where I know that if I keep going, I’ll be in danger. There are the slow downs in the drizzling traffic, when I don’t even know what is going on and why it’s necessary to have them on, but everyone else’s are, so I turn them on. Then there are the hazard lights that we turn on when we’re obstructing traffic to wait for someone or something. It feels dangerous and exciting at the beginning but after a while you’re annoyed and desperate. Am I explaining myself?
Well, today I realized, that I’m at the annoyed and desperate stage. I am the kind of person that overthinks, analyzes and deeply reads between the lines. I find myself always reflecting on any interaction I have throughout the day. Now I know this is normal to some extent, but I just don’t know how to turn the switch off. My brain is constantly documenting and saving observations and thoughts for later but never takes the time to organize the files. It was not until the last few days that I started listening to the files in my brain that got put in the back. They were my feelings. As I grow, I start to understand and relate to all the concepts humans write, sing, and talk about. One of the universal concepts that has recently been revealed to me is self love.
The phrase that I had struggled to interpret is “happiness is a decision”. Happiness is, as a matter of fact a decision. I have recently realized that in order to decide to be happy, I should start acknowledging what doesn’t make me happy. I have been in a relationship for 5 years. From age 18 to 23. The amount of experiences that carve a person’s character at this time is brutal. How could I not know that!? Spending time with just a select few people, kept me from viewing, enjoying and appreciating so many other beautiful perspectives of life and probably would have helped me understand myself more. To me, meeting people is kind of like feeding my soul. But for the past few months I felt like I was always looking out the window, savoring meals from the inside. I am a curious, easily intrigued person. I cannot hold small talk conversations, instead of talking about the weather, I find myself talking to strangers about weird thoughts and feelings and end up having interesting conversations. Like once at the airport, I was holding Thomas Freedman’s From Beirut to Jerusalem, and a Lebanese girl happened to be right across from me. When I saw her passport, I showed her my book and asked her about her perspective of some random issue I was reading about. The fact that I asked her about her country made her happy enough to befriend me instantly on social media. We’re best friends now. JK. But that is just the type of person I am. Do you know how it feels to be about to act on something, and all of a sudden feeling restrained by an unknown force? Well, at some point you realize what this force is, and for me it was fear of hurting and of getting hurt.
It all comes down to being young and not knowing how to handle all these thoughts and situations. In order to get a sense of clarity, I had to take it slow and easy. I questioned my feelings. I had to think Is this what I want? five thousand times a day. Even now that I made the decision, I have to keep telling myself this is not just what you wanted, but what you needed. So yes, happiness is a decision, but you can’t decide to be happy if you don’t put yourself first. Listen to those files stored in your brain. Before you can love anybody else, you need to love yourself. Get to know yourself. Date yourself. This is the beginning of my journey of deciding to be happy. 
What the thoughts? 