Next to me, was a family of three. “Shut the fuck up, Josh,” whispered the mother to a man who I assume was her husband. He rolled his eyes and, ten seconds later, he stood and walked to the counter to put in their breakfast order. Their son was approximately four or five years old. His big brown eyes were scanning his surroundings. I was sitting alone with my baby’s stroller in front of me, waiting for Le Husband to pick up his iced matcha latte when our eyes met. I smiled immediately. As to say, All is well, I’m happy, be happy, little boy. It seemed it worked because he smiled at me in return.
I must’ve been his age when my kindergarten teacher, Miss Monica, grabbed my shoulders and pressed my body against the wall. “You must be happy at all times, Alejandra,” she said. We were about to start singing a German song designed to motivate children to tidy up. It begins with Ein, zwei, drei. I was sad because I didn’t want to go home and I knew that was exactly what was going to happen after the tune were over. So I mentioned to the teacher I was terribly unhappy. I suppose she didn’t have time or the emotional bandwidth to start a conversation about emotions and how nuanced and transitory they can be. So, instead, she made a statement that would be forever carved in my brain.
My father had sent me to that German school despite the horror that it caused in Opa (my grandfather). The only thing I ever heard Opa say about Germans was that he was immensely happy there were none at the beaches in Venezuela. I couldn’t understand why. My father later explained to me something called World War II had scarred many people and Opa was one of them. He had been taken to Germany against his will to work at a Forced Labor Camp as an engineer. “So he wasn’t happy there?” I asked my father. “No, he wasn’t. But he was able to escape under a train and he was back in Holland and then, he was happy.”
Last week, after the psychiatric screening that revealed I was depressed and chronically anxious, I broke the news to a good friend over popcorn, while we were picking a movie to watch.
“I’m depressed,” I said, right after we’d discarded the category Drama.
She turned to me, unruffled. “Well, that’s normal, right?”
Instinctually, I laughed so hard that I peed my panties a little. I was laughing because she was kind of right. And I knew exactly why.
First of all, I don’t know many happy people. But I can imagine how they are. Kind, healthy, totally in control of their emotions, and, well, boring.