To me, attaining happiness is simple: choosing to be happy.

When you change your perspective on life, you change how you feel. Only you can make you happy. You choose to make your life the best it can be. 

In life, you are in a war against yourself, against your own stupid mind, and you can win. You’re asking yourself “What’s the point in life? What’s the purpose?” But what you don't realize is that it's you. You are the point. You are the purpose. You give your life purpose. You find those points of interest in your life and you chase after them. Find what makes you happy and chase after it like a dog after a wild rabbit. Because I bet you anything that that dog is happy, and isn't concerned with all the existential things I mentioned. I guess what I'm trying to say is that in order to be happy, you need to quit focusing on the negatives. Realize that your potential is huge and you have the agency over it to make that potential be put to good use.

You are in control of your own fate, and you can choose to make it a happy ending. 

Memories of that night come back in flashes, what I've learned to know as the lightning, a storm at sea. The strong oceans wrecking havoc all throughout my emotions, my head aches. Every thought that could've possibly been there was consumed by their hungry waves, nothing exists except for those oceans. The frigid water is suffocating, lacking light, or to be put simply: hope. However, this is all momentarily, it is soon over. The oceans are calmed, as I can control them, and rid them from their storms.

Murphy sighs, bringing me back to shore before she speaks again. "Don't tell me Issac is the reason why you don't want to go. What happened was for the best, and you know it."

I exhale a big breath of air, and this time, oxygen fills my lungs instead of ocean water. Murphy's right, even though I don't want to admit it.

Here's the story between Issac and me: we started dating in our sophomore year, and we had a good relationship. Hell, a really good one. I- er, I mean, we genuinely loved each other. Things started to get progressively worse until one of the bigger parties at the end of freshman year. I went, without him, to find him there sucking the face of another girl.

He used to be the oxygen for my lungs. What I needed to survive. But I wasn't the same way for him. As a result, he drowned me. 

I got over him during the summer, the season changed and I grew up. Fall Out Boy will tell you that, "Baby, seasons change but people don't," but that's a lie. You can change, for better or worse. Issac changed me, made me into someone I was not. He loved me, I know for a fact he did, but he was lustful and I gave in to what he wanted that I didn't. He was reckless, impatient, arrogant, really. I was accepting of all this, forgiving. We were opposites, and that's why things, all our fights, the nasty, explosive fights, would work out. But, unfortunately not always, and he would win. He always would, I can see that now. After each one, he would destroy me, and then make me feel like he built me again when I was still broken. For I did not have a voice, for I was too afraid to speak my opinions. Why would I? Your shouts and screams will never be heard over crashing waves. He had all the control in the relationship, he was too powerful. Breaking up with him was the best decision I ever made. I remembered what it was like to be independent, to be free. But he still texts me saying he wants me back, telling me how he still loves me. I don't believe it for a second. I don't want anything to do with him, why would I ever want something that destructive in my life again?

And yet, I have never stopped loving him. Or at least, what he did for me. He may have been a rough patch of storms for me to sail through, but he never was an entire reckless ocean; that simply doesn't exist. Although the ocean has done horrible, terrible things, people run back to it. There are beauty and mystery in the seven seas, just like in Issac.

I've just decided that his ocean is not for me.