I was a self sacrificer.
I thought that’s what you do when you love someone. You sacrifice yourself for them.
I wanted them to be happy.
I remember the day I consciously made the choice that I would support whatever made someone else happy, at any expense to myself, because if they weren’t happy at the end of their life and blamed me for it, I couldn’t live with myself.
I roll my eyes now thinking about it. Apparently I was the happiness fairy, and had control over everyone else’s happiness, even though I was giving up my own.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that happiness is extremely elusive. We can’t possibly be happy all of the time, life isn’t even designed that way.
And although we can bring each other moments of happiness, we can’t make someone else happy.
Happiness is an inside job, it’s totally personal and it’s in every single choice we make, thought we think, and story we tell ourselves.
Sacrificing yourself for someone else doesn’t make any sense when you look at it that way.
The hard truth is you just can’t bring a moment of happiness to anyone when you don’t have one to bring because you’ve sacrificed yours.