No Such Thing As Happiness Megan Lindsay University of Mississippi
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University of Mississippi eGrove Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors Theses Honors College) 2015 No Such Thing As Happiness Megan Lindsay University of Mississippi. Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Lindsay, Megan, "No Such Thing As Happiness" (2015). Honors Theses. 686. https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/686 This Undergraduate Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College (Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College) at eGrove. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of eGrove. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NO SUCH THING AS HAPPINESS by Megan Lindsay A thesis submitted to the faculty of The University of Mississippi in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College. Oxford May 2015 Approved by Advisor: Professor Elizabeth Spencer Reader: Professor Daniel Stout Reader: Associate Dean Debra Young © 2015 Megan Lindsay ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii To Grandma Evelyn & PaPa Bill iii ABSTRACT MEGAN LINDSAY: No Such Thing as Happiness (Under the direction of Beth Spencer) This thesis contains a collection of short stories I have written over a two year period. Major themes include loss, healing, nature, mental health issues, and the ways in which relationships (familial, companionate, etc.) strengthen characters. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Time Capsules 8 Withered 12 Phoenix 31 Moss Creek 35 Fetch 74 Suspended 77 A Watched Pot Never Boils 104 The Flower of Death 107 Crash Landing 146 Frame of Reference 149 Acknowledgments 160 v “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” - Robert Frost “But are we all lost stars, trying to light up the dark?” - “Lost Stars”, Maroon 5 vi Introduction This project originally began as a fantasy fiction creative writing thesis, which did not stick as I worked my way through my creative writing classes. Some fantasy elements remain, but my focus shifted to a different topic: the idea of happiness. I remember reading once that the idea of ‘obtaining happiness’ was an absurd Western notion, that we view happiness as a tangible object that you can possess. While reading Cane for my African American Literature class, I came across a passage that more eloquently describes the problem at hand: There is no such thing as happiness. Life bends joy and pain, beauty and ugliness, in such a way that no one may isolate them. No one should want to. Perfect joy, or perfect pain, with no contrasting element to define them, would mean a monotony of consciousness, would mean death. (81) I think there’s a certain frustration we feel, as people, when this ideal happiness can’t be obtained. But more importantly, this shows there is a fundamental misunderstanding about our own emotional health. Even at our happiest, our emotions aren’t static. Psychologists, when talking about any kind of mental disorders, talk about them on a sliding scale, meaning there are various degrees to which people are affected. It’s not two separate circles of either “You have the disorder” or “You don’t have the disorder.” Our mental-emotional health isn’t as clean cut as physical disorders. On a daily basis we might feel sorrow, anger, joy, worry, excitement, and so on. The traditional ‘happily ever after,’ leaves quite a bit unsaid. 1 I fit the stories within the time frame of a seasonal year because of stories like “Moss Creek,” and “The Flower of Death,” which I had written in previous creative writing classes. I wasn’t sure of the overall theme of my thesis at the time, but my older stories had content I wanted to include. I eventually developed each story to deal with an emotional state that correlated with the season in which it was taking place. Weather conditions never play a large physical role within the story; what mattered more to me was the symbolic resonance. “Moss Creek,” for instance, largely occurs in the thawing out between winter and spring as Reagan tries to deal with her anxiety. Similarly, in “The Flower of Death,” Morgen is at an in-between moment in her life, dealing with the return of her ex-husband and looming personal loss, as the weather shifts from summer to fall. From these first stories, I built the rest of my thesis. The seasonal progression of my stories reflects different states of mind, characters suffering through the worst moments of their lives and others who are at current high points or moments of stability. However, like Toomer’s quote said earlier, sorrow exists alongside happiness, beauty alongside ugliness. There is a kind of balance that exists in life in that the good and the bad moments are constantly counteracting each other. Life oscillates between good, bad, and every place in between, much like the seasons. Happiness may not be a constant, but neither is grief, anger, depression, or pain. Of the ten stories in my thesis, five are less than a thousand words – I like to refer to them as my intercalary stories. Within each seasonal division, the shorter stories parallel the longer ones thematically. Each story is intended to resonate with its respective season and have moments of overlap with external stories while maintaining its individuality, much like how humans share similar experiences but react uniquely as 2 individuals. Also characteristic of my intercalary stories are the fantasy undertones. Excluding “The Flower of Death,” these stories are what remain of my original fantasy fiction thesis idea, little moments of magic between the longer pieces. These stories were the most fun for me to write, taking something as ordinary as a sunrise or a firefly and looking at them in a new way. A part of growing up is realizing the world isn’t a magical place. You outgrow Santa Claus, spells, superstitions, and the magical fog of childhood where nothing is limited. And that’s what great about writing: rediscovering a kind of magic in the world. The Winter Stories The winter stories are about loss. Albeit this is a constant theme throughout my thesis, but the winter stories, especially “Withered,” deal with the immediate impact of loss and the early stages of grief. Keely (from “Time Capsules”) and Kasey (from “Withered”) are both emotionally distant, dealing with loneliness, and trying to make sense of a world that has left them broken. This low moment in their lives is reflected in the icy winter weather. The parallelism between the two stories (and the ones that follow) is utilized to highlight the universalities of human experience. Grief is handled uniquely by each individual, but the experience can be shared. Despite the predominance of pain and loss in the winter stories, there is still love, loyalty, and hope. These things are not lost in sadness; we must simply dig deeper to find them. In “Withered,” I modelled Kasey’s grieving a little bit on my own. I have not experienced much personal loss, but her initial numbness reflects how I felt when my grandfather passed away my senior year of high school. When a death occurs unexpectedly, you’re not necessarily given a chance to react, especially when the 3 visitation, funeral processes, and financial loose ends need to be taken care of. It’s the moments almost immediately after these services that you have the chance to react. That’s when it settles heavily in your mind and you must bear it in whatever way you can. For Kasey, this means an emotional freezing, one in which she is still stuck by the end of her story. Her moment of healing, her spring, will come around in due time. The Spring Stories The spring stories are ones of healing and rejuvenation, of working toward a place of stability and happiness. In “Phoenix,” the birch has that moment of rebirth that Cynthia’s spider plant did not in “Withered.” Although we lose people, there is life after death, in that the world keeps turning and people keep living. We either learn to keep moving or die prematurely. Reagan, Tyler, and Elise’s father are learning to rebuild after hitting their respective low points. In “Moss Creek,” multiple types of healing occur for both Reagan and Tyler. Reagan struggles with her anxiety and how to shoulder outside expectations that don’t necessarily align with her own desires. So she runs away, which I’m sure is not an uncommon reaction to feeling trapped by your own life. There have been many times when I wished I could pack up, drive somewhere new, and just start over; so I did what any writer would do: I wrote a story about a character who runs away. That’s often the nature of anxiety, being afraid of facing someone or something head-on. Although “Moss Creek” is about facing these issues, recovery isn’t an instantaneous thing. Neither Reagan nor Tyler necessarily handles his or her problems in a heroic manner, but Tyler teaches Reagan that she needs time to heal and it is okay to face obstacles on her own terms. 4 When Reagan’s ready, she’ll write again. And with a little more time, Tyler will return home to Nashville. The Summer Stories The summer stories are ones of stability. “Fetch” is a special case in that we momentarily take a step back from the main theme of loss. It provides a moment to distance yourself from the stories and process what is happening while reminding us of the cyclic nature of day and night, of the seasons, of life itself.