A Place Near the Navel

I am sitting alone in my kitchen on an abandoned campus and there is something inside me - somewhere in my stomach, a line between the bottom of my breastplate and the ol’ navel - that is happy. I know an emotion can’t reside in a specific part of the body, but I feel it there nonetheless - and no, it’s not the turkey talking, because I haven’t had any yet. Normally I’d put it down to the coffee I just had because coffee tends to make all things better, but it’s not that this morning, either. I’m just happy.


Joy is a hard emotion to hold. It is light, buoyant, and so wants to break free and float away after a while. Depression, sadness, is heavy and it settles into the crevices like tar so that it is nearly impossible to remove, and the task of removing it is exhausting so that you sit down to rest and get stuck in the sticky substance anyway.


Perhaps because I am so often chained down by the very chemical imbalance of my body, I am incredibly happy that my body is choosing to feel happy, right in that spot in my stomach where turkey is going to fit quite nicely in a few hours. I am alone - in a literal sense (there is no one here) and in a romantic and familial sense. But I don’t feel alone, not today. I have people I love spread all over the country, and friends spread all over the globe. I can reach out and touch any of them and know that anywhere I look, there is a human being I have the honor of knowing on a personal level.


Most days, it is hard to see the beauty in anything, let alone an entire world. My eyes get dimmed down with a lack of serotonin, and everything looks dirty, looks gray. Today, there is a balance of chemicals, a wonderfully neutral stasis off which I can dive into anything - and I choose happiness.


I choose joy. I choose peace. That is not a choice I can make most days, and I am thankful - among so many other things - for this small ability today. And knowing I have not taken medication for it, it must be something from outside myself, some undeserved gift, as is generally the nature of gifts. Because I never blatantly thank the deity I believe in, today I will.


God, thank you. Thank you for happiness. Thank you for being love.