One woman and her pursuit for happiness

Have you ever asked yourself if your truly really happy? or have you like me and many others decided to accept what you have, buy yourself a new pair of shoes, maybe even a handbag to match, and convince yourself that you ARE happy afterall and life isn't so bad. What happens when the shoes get worn and the handbag, well it just doesn't fit with anything in your wardrobe anymore?

This is a journey of one young woman's struggle with her innate desire to be happy against the social values and norms that society inflicts on her to be a good wife and mother, and labeling any attempt at personal happiness as selfish.

My name is Kim, and to tell you the truth im not really sure when i realised i was unhappy with my life, it was more something that just crept up on me. Everyone's definition of happiness i guess is different. I asked some friends if they were happy with their life's path and generally the response was yes, but interestingly they defined their own happiness by what they had, nobody told me they were completely happy within, and any decisions to be made about their life were always made after considering children, husbands/partners, parents, work etc. result being what my female friends really wanted to make them happy was always compromised by one or more other factors in their life. This got me thinking about just how much we as women give up in order to adhere to the norms of society. Ask any single, career driven woman if she feels completely accepted in her choice not to marry and have children and she'll tell you no. The single career woman will have a string of experiences where she's been made to feel inadequate for not being married with children, or where men have viewed her as a threat because she's independent and non dependent.

Collins English dictionary definition of happy; 'Glad, Content, Lucky Fortunate', when i read this i was a bit surprised. My increasing restlessness in my marriage and my life would not appear to be anything to do with being unhappy, If i was to use this definition as a guide. You see throughout my marriage there have been times when i've been glad, contented and even at times felt lucky and fortunate, so does that mean i was happy? or does happy mean to be in a permanent state of gladness and contentment, i began to wonder what that actually might feel like, in fact i began to seek it out.

In order to take you on my pursuit of happiness with me, it's important that you understand where i come from, what shaped my early years and how it impacted on my life later.

Born the third child to teeenage parents, with an alcoholic mother, i guess it was evident from an early age that happiness was always going to be an elusive concept within my life. My childhood was fatherless, and it is this that i now see as being the main driver in the establishment of my young adult life. An absent father and an enlightened experience with the care system, i feel really were the two things in my life that informed me of the sort of life i wanted for myself....I guess the only life you'd yearn for when you've never had a real family experience or a father to look out for you....yes, you guessed it, all i craved was a man to look after me and a little family home with me at the helm.

Growing up i always had my list of things to do by the time i was 30. Everyone has one, they just don't always tell you about it. My list may have seemed pretty ordinary to anyone who had the goodfortune to get a decent start in life, a start that may only have consisted of two loving parents, but to me this was never the less, a decent start. You see, i never wanted much from my life back then, i guess i may have felt i never deserved it, and maybe this is why my aspirations were not of grandure, but for simple things like have a home to live in, being able to drive, and i allowed myself to dream of an education at a university, this was something i always thought would be out of my reach, and the dream meant so much to me.

Fast forward a few years and im 30 years old and believe it or not im studying in India and on the brink of graduating from University, not only that i'm a happily married woman and mother, who, get this! drives herself to work! Imagine, getting to 30 and having everything you ever thought you wanted, it was a wierd but wonderful feeling. However, it seemed that in my focus toward having a husband to look out for me, i didn't take much time to consider the qualities of a man that would indeed live up to the job, or was it that higher education changed my perspective of what was important in to me? When i chose my husband many years before, it never occurred to me to look for someone who would respect me, encourage me, and be a partner, if truth be told i had no real measure of what a good relationship looked like, so it's hardly surprising i got it wrong. Please don't get me wrong here, i loved my husband for many years, but as i grew and changed and began to understand my self better, he simply didn't, and so this young girl who was growing into an independent young woman was being stilted and held back by a husband who to be totally honest was at the very least confused by what was changing around him, and in many ways did not know how to react, so he tried to take control of the situation to make it feel like something he was more comfortable with, this served to be the catalyst for my pursuit of something else.

The start of my journey..coming soon!