



Bojack Horseman is over, and here I am wondering what to do with all the leftover damage.





“...I feel like I was born with a leak, and any goodness I started with just slowly spilled out of me, and now it’s all gone. And I’ll never get it back in me.”





Sometimes the right show can force you to reflect inwards, saying “Hey, look at your life through the eyes of a cartoon horse and his friends and wonder if you’re really as bad as you think you are.”





For so long I’ve struggled with the idea of goodness, that I have done and said too many bad things and I will forever live with the weight I’ve shouldered myself with. This struggle intrudes into every friendship, every romance, every conversation I find myself wrapped up in - do I still have enough good left inside of me to be loved?





Sadness has always been a comfort, a crutch I use to sink deeper into the worst parts of myself, as if fully embracing the lows would somehow make them more bearable in the long run (spoiler alert: this does not work). Happiness is so much harder to keep around - one day it’s there, the next it’s gone. Sadness has always been a constant, and reliability is hard to come by yah know?





“That's the thing. I don't think I believe in deep down. I kinda think that all you are is just the things that you do.”





If I let go of the guilt, let go of the shame I have for ruining things, would anything get better? I’m so quick to shut myself away from happiness because I’m so afraid of it being gone forever. If I invited happiness in, would it stay? Even in the act of letting go, the damage remains; I still feel a need to make this sadness mean something, anything. What good is all this damage if it doesn’t grow into something better?





“That means that all the damage I got isn’t ‘good damage’. It’s just damage. I have gotten nothing out of it and all those years I was miserable was for nothing. I could have been happy this whole time...and been cheerful and popular...is that what you’re saying? What was it all for?”





Maybe everything I struggle with isn’t going to end in some big, beautiful conclusion where I’m a famous poet and people resonate with my words and I’m permanently happy - maybe it will amount to some small poems I love and some bad songs I keep trying to write. Maybe it will amount to having friends who understand me when I can’t understand anything, or having hand to hold when I forget how to breathe.





Maybe there will always be more sad than happy inside my brain, and maybe there won’t be. But I would love to start accepting the happiness whenever it comes, however fleeting it may be. Allowing myself goodness will never fully resolve whatever damage I have, but a little good has been going a long way recently, and I’d like to keep this streak going - it will be nice to see how long it will last.





“It takes a long time to realize how truly miserable you are, and even longer to see that it doesn't have to be that way. Only after you give up everything can you begin to find a way to be happy.”



























