The Happiest Day of my Life

This is not to discount all the other days I've lived. I've had some very blissful days spent with friends and loved ones. I've had some very wonderful days just reading commentary over books I love. Those days were amazing. I'm not trying to disparage them. Honestly, this is less about happiness and more about trauma. Or rather, it's about the removal of trauma.

The happiest day of my life happened when I was 40.

My roommate brought me home from the doctor's office. They'd removed all the staples from my upper arm. I was in my bed and I knew I didn't have to go back to Fort Smith or back to any doctors for two whole weeks. I'd never felt such happiness. 

The earlier months of being 40 were terrifying. I couldn't stop bleeding and then the ER where they did nothing and then weeks of trying to see my doctor and then a horrible gynecologist and then cancer diagnosis and then a complicated surgery where they removed a 13 lb lump from my arm (not related to the cancer) and staples running from my shoulder to almost the bend of my arm and pain and pain and pain and drainage tubes and exhaustion and the horror of trying to keep so many staples from getting infected and having to talk to so many strangers and answer so many questions and be evaluated by so many people and itching and pain and don't take the meds and still no way of knowing how the cancer thing would happen and--

And then I was in my bed, healed enough for the staples to be gone. No doctors for two weeks. No appointments for two weeks. I was healing. There was progress. I was still exhausted, but the chaos of my life had lifted just slightly, and that lifting left me happier than I had ever been. 

It was a beautiful moment. Admittedly I like all my other days of happiness more because I didn't have to stumble through Hell to get to them.