What does happiness look like? For writer Chenille Cooper, the answer is complicated.
It’s Saturday afternoon, a little after midday. I can hear my father saying the opening prayer for this week’s church service on Facebook Live in the kitchen. My ten-month-old is running full speed across the living room, fully amused at the game he’s playing with my 18-year-old sister. My mother is sitting on the opposite couch with her Bible, ready to absorb the day’s message. This has been the scene every Saturday morning since March when Covid-19 forced us to quarantine, but this week, things feel different. In this moment I realize, this is the happiest I have been in a very long time. Really happy, not a superficial blip of happiness that fades over a short amount of time.
If you had told me seven months ago that I would ever be happy again, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me that this would be my happiness, I definitely would have thought you lost your mind.
I feel like my life has been in disarray since graduating from UNC Charlotte in December 2015. I wasn’t quite able to land a good job in the area, let alone one in my industry, mental health, after graduation, but I managed for a while. Eventually, I moved back to New York and after a few months back home, a recommendation landed me a position on a Mobile Crisis team at a local hospital.
I loved what I did during my time there. I enjoyed learning from the social workers and doctors that I was paired with, and they encouraged me to continue my education. I also longed to do more. If I got a Master’s degree and my license to counsel, then I could start being successful, I thought. I got accepted into UNC Charlotte’s Mental Health Counseling Graduate Program and I exhausted my savings moving back to Charlotte, which in hindsight, was not smart on my part. I struggled to find a job and to adjust to graduate school, and soon ended up pregnant. All in the span of four months.
By November of 2019 I was barely holding it together. I would spend large amounts of time in my car just sobbing. My attempt to give my child a “normal” family had failed miserably; I had dropped out of graduate school, and now I was a single mother with no job and no help from her child’s father. I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror because I felt like I had failed at everything.
Having work experience in the mental health field, I realized that I needed to reach out for some help. A few weeks prior I had been screened for and diagnosed with depression and while I had ignored the suggestions to seek help at the time, this was a new low. I logged onto my insurance providers website and attempted to find anyone to talk to. No results within 100 miles. My mother found therapists through her resources at work but no one returned my call. Finally, during a Thursday afternoon Google search for “African American therapist in Long Island,” I found Miss Lori. When she answered the phone I could barely say my name; I was crying so hard. She immediately made room for me in her schedule and I have been healing and growing ever since.
While you are in the midst of depression, it often feels like there’s no way out, especially when you don’t even have the energy to seek out help. Depression can very easily feel like the final stop on the journey that is your life. You get so overwhelmed by the darkness and the heaviness that is settling in on you that when people attempt to give you little glimpses of light, they feel more like lightning bolts striking through. You can see it, but only for a quick moment and it’s something that you’ll most likely never be able to touch. Everyone is showing you this light but it’s in a far off distance. While the storm never gets comfortable, the shelter that you have made for yourself does. You accept it as your new normal and you slowly start letting a select few people in. It takes one person to meet you where you are at, to guide you back out. That was and still is Miss Lori for me.
***
In late 2019, I started working on my create box, an alternate version of a vision board. In the box, you write down your goals on individual pieces of paper, thus allowing you to take out, add in, and revamp as needed. I had laid out my index cards, decorated the unlined side with topics and filled the lined sides with what I wanted to accomplish within the next year. As I mulled over the cards, I realized just how many of my goals I have been able to accomplish.
One of the goals I put on a card was to create again. I love to make things: crafts, art, food, but I had since stopped all of it. My relationship with my creativity had taken a turn for the worse and I desired to get back to a place where I genuinely enjoyed what I was making. I have been able to start up writing again, first with journaling and now through AYO and my own blog, On the NsiX. I even started painting again. These avenues of creativity have allowed me to express myself in a healthy way once more and as is the case with painting, release what I am sometimes unable to put into words.
I also sought to be honest and more transparent in my relationships. I have a habit of being a people pleaser; instead of explicitly stating my desires, I roll with whatever is offered to me, regardless of whether or not it is what I wanted. It has been such a freeing experience to no longer be fearful of judgement or rejection.
One of the most important tasks I set to complete in my box was to completely stop the self-depreciation I constantly indulged in. My life had taken a detour–a very unexpected detour–from how I planned it to be. I would spend a lot of time obsessing over how I had seemingly messed up my life and all the signs that I missed that led me to the present moment. In my unplugged time, I had an epiphany: that detour gave me the most beautiful part of my life; my son, Jré. How can I wake up to this amazing little boy every single morning and really be mad? Sometimes detours can be rough but the insight you gain on the trip is lit.
Has everything pan out the way I hoped it would? Absolutely not. But I feel free knowing that I’m no longer standing in a gray area where a lot of my interpersonal relationships are concerned. Being transparent has also presented a lot of opportunities and learning experiences, like working on social media engagement for a friend’s church, and helping another friend with her business venture. I have also been able to write for ManiFeast, a networking organization for people of color based here in New York.
In the midst of all this chaos, the senseless killings, everything going on within the black community, and my own battle with depression, I turned down the volume on the outside world and tapped into myself, realizing just how incredibly blessed I have been. Sometimes we get so caught up in the goals we aren’t knocking out the park and miss the ones we’re checking off. Goals can shift and they can evolve; they may even change completely but it’s up to you to celebrate even the smallest ones that you complete.
This is not what I thought my 30-year-old life would ever look like. I am a single mother, I live in my parent’s basement, and I cannot land a full-time job to save my life right now. Even with all that, I am in a space where my child and I are loved and supported beyond measure. That love and support have been pushing me to victory all along. My large goals are still sitting in the create box, but the small ones I had thought to be so minuscule have provided such great stepping stones for me to achieve them. Your girl is blessed.
I don’t know if I have moved completely past the chaos yet, but I no longer reside in it. I have made a conscious choice to grow from what I have been through and learn from each experience, both negative and positive. Initially, I let anger and uncertainty alter the person I was. With every year I became angrier and more withdrawn. I choose to take that power back now. Counting my blessings and acknowledging my growth in the middle of the mess is what led me to this moment: sitting on the couch, feet up with my laptop out, smiling. Because for the first time in a long time, I am happy.
