HAPPINESS.

When I was young, my parents didn’t earn a lot. They made enough money to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach and that was about it. I wasn’t too bothered. Sure, the other kids with the rich parents used to use their expensive trainers and branded rucksacks as some juvenile stick to beat me with but it never really got me down.

I understood from an early age that it was about needs versus wants. I could want for these things all day long but I didn’t need them to live. I made peace with that. I knew my parents were doing the best job they knew how to do and just because the world kicked them down based on the colour of their skin I never saw it on their faces. They knew they had to be strong, to show me that the world could throw only obstacles, and that life was about clearing them.

Then when I was about 8, at Christmas, we woke up in the morning and the fire was crackling, and after the usual small gifts – socks, shortbread biscuits and other traditional things – there was still one present wrapped neatly under the small tree. I expected it would be from my Dad to my Mum, but no, it had my name scrawled on the tag.

I opened it, and there in a sealed box and pristine as day was my dream come true. A PlayStation 2. Underwhelmed? Most people are when I tell this story. But you have no idea how happy that made me. My parents, who worked so hard for peanuts, had spent what must have been every last penny they could scrape together to buy me a PS2. Not only that, it was BRAND NEW. Not second hand. Not somebody else’s. Mine.

That Christmas was the happiest time of my life. I spent the whole school holidays in pure unadulterated joy. I whittled away the hours playing the demo disk that came with it. My parents had created the best memory for me. Then two months later they were divorced. It turns out they wanted to make it easier for me and the happiness was just an act.

So I understand, Happy. I get why you live in this constant state of happiness. It’s brilliant when you don’t have a care in the world, but Happy let me tell you this: the happiness always ends. The pure unadulterated joy is always just a mask for the tragedy that’s coming, and you’ll never be prepared as long as you don’t see it.

That’s why as much as I understand it, I wouldn’t take it back, Happy. Not even as I am now, a slave to a Nazi and a let-down to my strong, moral parents, would I trade it in for that seemingly unending happiness. Because what comes after feels so much worse and hits so much harder.

I’d say take it as a lesson learned, if I was able to teach…