"I felt the suffocating pressure to feel happiness most acutely in my 20s, when my parents made their hope for me clear: We just want you to be happy, they'd say. And listen, I am deeply aware and grateful that they weren't saying, "We want you to settle down" or "Find a more lucrative profession." Their hopes for me were noble and generous. But I remember knowing at the time that "happy" was the one thing I could not be at that particular point. I could pay the rent, do my job, try not to get too drunk or go home with anyone dangerous, meet nice people, attempt to cobble together the foundation of an adult life that might hold something -- Work? Home? Friends? Money? Marriage? Kids? -- that might one day yield something closer to contentment. But at that point, I could not be happy, at least not on a regular basis. I was too filled with fear -- about future, about money, about loneliness."
Screw Happiness by Rebecca Traister
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