The Joy of Being Alive Anyway

Day 94 – February 25, 2026

There’s something deeply rebellious about finding joy after trauma. Not fake joy. Not that weird motivational speaker nonsense where people act like suffering is just a pre-workout for gratitude and all you need is a better mindset and maybe a sunrise.

I mean real joy.

The kind that sneaks in sideways. The kind that catches you off guard. The kind that makes you laugh at something stupid and then realize, with a little shock, that your body remembered how to do that without asking permission from the Department of Emotional Damage first.

That happened to me today.

Not in one huge cinematic moment. No dramatic music. No sacred bird landed on my windowsill and whispered, “Babe, you’re healed.” It was smaller than that.

Which is how the good things usually arrive. Quietly. Without branding. Just a few ridiculous moments where life stopped feeling like a legal case, a grief project, a nervous system management seminar, and a haunted house in lipstick and felt, instead, a little bit alive.

That matters because for a while I felt almost guilty when joy showed up.

Like if I laughed too hard or enjoyed something too much, I might be disrespecting the seriousness of what happened. As if pain required full time loyalty. As if trauma had to remain the main character forever or I was somehow betraying the truth.

Which, when you say it out loud, is such abusive logic.

Absolutely not. Joy is not betrayal. Joy is survival with better posture. Joy is the body saying, I know what happened, and I am still willing to experience something besides it.

That is radical. That is a little sexy, honestly.

And maybe that’s why it hit me so hard today, because joy after devastation doesn’t feel naive. It feels chosen. It feels like an act of defiance. Like looking life dead in the eye after it has already shown you its teeth and saying, “Okay, cool. I’d still like to enjoy this coffee, this dog, this weird little afternoon, and whatever stupid beautiful moment happens next.”

That’s power.

Also, and this is important, joy is often really dumb. No one tells you that.

People talk about joy like it’s always poetic. Sometimes it is. Sometimes the sky is wide and the light is gorgeous and you feel moved in a very cinematic, emotionally expensive way. Other times it’s just Roger losing his ever loving mind because I dropped a piece of food on the floor.

And I do mean losing it.

Immediate ecstasy. Total commitment. Full spiritual awakening over one accidental crumb like he had just discovered religion and it tasted faintly of chicken. His enthusiasm was so disproportionate, so sincere, so violently full body that I laughed hard enough to forget myself for a second.

And that was the gift. Not just the laugh. The forgetting. The tiny blessed moment where I was not monitoring, processing, contextualizing, healing, rebuilding, analyzing, or trying to be brave in some mature and narratively satisfying way.

I was just laughing at my ridiculous dog having what can only be described as a canine dance of gratitude over floor food. That is joy.

Embarrassing. Unserious. Perfect.

And maybe that’s what makes it holy. Because joy does not wait for your life to become tidy. It doesn’t need the story resolved. It doesn’t care whether healing is complete or whether the room is emotionally curated enough to deserve it. It just appears. Wild little thing. No respect for timing. No concern for narrative consistency.

Very me, honestly. That’s why I’m starting to trust it again. Not because it means everything is fine. But because it means everything is not only pain.

There are still flashes of life. Still moments that land in the body as pleasure, silliness, beauty, warmth, delight. Still these tiny rebellions against despair that make existence feel less like a burden and more like something I might still seduce into being beautiful.

Roger, of course, experienced enormous joy again later over something equally silly, because his standards for ecstasy are low, accessible, and honestly enviable.

A leaf. A snack. A weird sound. The possibility of cheese. He remains open to delight in a way that feels both spiritually advanced and deeply unserious.

I respect it. I’m learning from it too.

Because maybe the point is not to become someone who has moved beyond hurt. Maybe the point is to become someone who can carry hurt and still let delight through the door when it arrives wearing clown shoes.

That feels more honest. And a lot more fun.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And the deeply unserious, wildly rebellious joy of being alive anyway.