Remember that scene in City of Angels where Meg Ryan’s character happily in love, rides her bike with her eyes closed and her arms wide open only to be fatally hit by a truck? Now, while I know the crucial lesson here is that operating any kind of machinery with your eyes shut and arms over your head generally results in death or some semblance of it, there seems to be a larger message at hand. Happiness is a precarious little thing and this scene in a nutshell summarises how I’ve often felt about most good things that happen to me, including falling in love. It is both exhilarating and terrifying, a blessing and a curse. It’s a constant reminder that everything in life that has been bestowed upon me is not something I truly deserve and could be snatched from my hands in a heartbeat at any time, but especially when I’m on a high.

“Careful, you’ll jinx it.”

This is something my sister and I often say to each other when we overtly express unadulterated joy or excitement over something, over anything really, from a job interview that went exceptionally well to a new blossoming friendship or even that new chicken stew recipe you think you’ve perfected. Don’t get ahead of yourself, Martha because there is a good chance you’re gonna fuck it all up.

Over the years, I’ve reminded myself many times to be grateful and to be happy but not too happy. Why? Self-preservation, perhaps? Inherently a negative Nancy? Or just superstitious? Maybe this is a product of my upbringing. Perhaps somewhere in there, lies a question of self-worth but that I’m certain is not a box I am inclined to open and take a peek into. I am trying to understand how and why we became so illogically cautious over voicing our happiness. Why do I assume, beyond reason and logic that articulating how blessed I am feeling (irl without the hashtag, of course), may lead to impending and excruciating loss? It sounds completely and utterly foolish, doesn’t it? And yet, this is my truth and I fail by my own damn complications.

As I hush the most recent obliterative whispers questioning my amour-propre and prerogative, I am trying to take chances, be recklessly expressive, be unafraid and live it and live in it. When life throws me a delicious bone, I am learning to gratefully (and boldly) accept it, place it on the silver platter that it rightfully deserves and chew on it, marvel at it and claim it. Why, you ask? Because I am flawed but I am also grateful, and loving something will always trump my own debilitating fear of losing something I love, regardless of whether I’m enough.

x.