For a long time I believed that happiness was a destination. If I could accomplish X, then I would be happy. If I could get A, B and C, then I would be happy. I was on this road and happiness was always just slightly out of reach. I always had to finish one more thing, climb over one more obstacle, obtain one more prize. In all honesty, it was a bit like playing Super Mario Brothers. I would get through all the levels and battle my way past Bowser only to discover that I’ve simply leveled up and there’s a whole new world of levels to get through. Only this one’s a frickin water world!

Seriously! WTF?

Happiness was also just out of reach. No matter what I did, I never got there. I saw other people that were happy. I guess I assumed they knew the super-secret-ninja-short-cut to by-pass all of the rigmarole. And they weren’t sharing the secret either! Then I realized that they weren’t sharing the secret, because there was no secret. Happiness is not a destination, just like life isn’t a destination (but that’s a whole other blog post). As it turns out, happiness is a choice. It’s that simple. There’s no secret handshake and no levels to clear. It is a choice. A choice of how we react to our surroundings. A choice of what we say to ourselves in our inner monologues. A choice of how we adapt to set-backs.

I’m trying to remember this right now in order to make the right choices. The choices that leave me happy, instead of the choices that leave me miserable. I’ve been sick, in one way or another, for almost two years now. I’ve seen my regular doctor and I’ve seen specialists, and they’ve all treated the symptoms that were in front of them. Without fail, those symptoms have either come back, or been replaced with new symptoms. I can’t seem to catch a break, or rise above the level of feeling “okay.” For the better part of this year, my weekends have consisted of me sleeping for the majority of at least one of my days off, if not both. It’s put a major damper in my productivity, and thus my mood.

However, I have been choosing to focus on the positive. I’ve been choosing happiness, for no other reason than I can. I have some truly wonderful people in my life, and despite everything else going on, that is reason enough to choose happiness. That being said, I’ve been having a lot of problems making that choice this week. Last week I saw a functional medicine doctor, and she is running more tests then I can count unless I take my shoes off. However, after getting my entire history and looking over my extensive list of foods that I can’t eat, she had an immediate gut reaction of a diagnosis – I’m allergic, or at least highly sensitive, to sulfites.

If she’s correct that sucks BIG TIME! (For the record, I think she is. One of the biggest sulfite culprits is wine, and drinking wine is a habit I took up about two years ago. Coincidence?) If I am allergic to sulfites it will not only take my already extremely limited list of foods I can eat and make it significantly smaller, but it will also take away the one social device I have. When I go out places with friends, I often can’t eat the food, but I CAN share a bottle of wine. Or raise a toast. Now I will be able to eat even less, and I’ll be the one drinking water at happy hour. Not to mention, I’m an introvert with anxiety issues. Sometimes it takes a glass of wine just so I can relax enough to enjoy myself.

I haven’t even begun to truly dive into what that will mean to my diet, because quite frankly I started to do the research it made me want to cry. You wanna know what they spray all over bacon to preserve it? You guessed it, sulfites! Needless to say, I’ve been having a hard time this week choosing happy. True, I don’t have the definitive diagnosis back, but from the research I’ve done, a sulfite allergy explains a lot of my issues. So I’m also having trouble choosing hope at this point. However, I am well aware of what life is like when you choose miserable. So no matter how hard it is, I’m going to choose happy. I might need some reminders though.