Sappy Happy

Today, okay maybe last Tuesday, I am the happiest I have ever been.  Sure, I have had many happy and memorable experiences in my life.  As well as many not so happy but equally as memorable experiences.  Today though I use happy as in fulfilled and truly content on an emotional and spiritual level.  Sure, we all want more.  We can think of things that we think would make us happier, say, more money for instance, but for the first time in my life I have actually just smiled in my surroundings and felt truly happy.  This is all a little sappy, I know, and believe me when I say that I am not a sappy person by any stretch of the imagination.

I know that the biggest thing that has made me feel this happy is my beautiful daughter.  Really, maybe even more accurately, it is the realtionship and love that my daughter and I share.  Lacking a healthy mother-daughter relationship growing up has made me feel truly amazing in my relationship with my daughter.  I know that doesn't quite sound like it makes sense.  I think the fact that my mother and I shared a not so healthy relationship has helped me to not take the relationship that my daughter and I are building for granted. Sure, she's only two and you would think that we've only only just begun to build that relationship.  Maybe relationship is not quite the right word.  A relationship is how people relate to one another and get along.  I'm talking about something deeper, something chemical, mystical even. 

She is an extension of myself, my best self.  The self I wish I was or could have been given the chance to be.  I want her to have the things I didn't have.  I want her to have a present mother, a non-alcoholic mother, a non-drug addict mother.  I want her to know her father, see her father, live with her father (and mother, of course).  I want her to have a normal childhood , whatever that may be. 

What I am realizing, and is contributing to my nauseating happiness, is that I actually am capable of providing this for my daughter.  I am capable of having a happy, healthy marriage, with my best friend I might add.  I am not as damaged as I was afraid I may be.  Somehow, despite my own mother having never really raised any of her own three children, I am a great mom.  My daughter is happy, healthy, brilliant, well mannered, and shows love.  Oh, and did I mention brilliant?  She truly is amazingly smart.  Love is not something I always felt from some of those I should have.   Love is not something I easily express to this day.

I am gushing about my daughter, like most mothers I suppose.  But, I really owe everything to my husband, without whom none of this would be possible.  Somehow he loves me despite all of my emotional shortcomings and numerous emotional outpourings.  I know that without him I would not be where I am today.  He supports me. He believes in me.  He loves me.  And that has made me who I am today.