What I Learned in 2023: The Source of My Happiness Is Inside Myself

Atlanta, GA
12/31/23

At first, I wasn’t going to write this. Or at least I wasn’t going to publish it. It felt tone deaf, insensitive or maybe even obnoxious to write about the great year I’ve had when, globally, it’s been a pretty shitty one. As I write this, wars in Gaza and Ukraine rage on, and that’s hardly an exhaustive list of the human suffering happening right now. While life is so difficult for so many, it felt wrong to share how good it’s been for me.

But then I read the following in a blog post written by someone I had recently interviewed for a story in my ongoing coverage of psychedelic medicine: “Joy is an emotion we suppress far too often.” I knew that by avoiding writing about what this year has been like for me, I was suppressing joy. And, true to my usual form, I wanted to sweep my joy under the rug because I felt guilty about it.

But now I’ll come out and say it, 2023 was the best year of my entire life.

First, I realized a dream that I’d had and been deferring for 30 years. I was 17 years old the first time I started dreaming of a trip to Japan. I was 47 when I got there – the last leg of a 10-week journey through Asia. Of course, that trip took up less than 20% of the year that I’m calling the best one of my entire life, but what a weight to take something off of your to-do list that has been languishing there for so long mostly because you were afraid to do it.

And fear wasn’t the only thing holding me back, which is another reason that blog post about suppressing joy spoke to me. He wrote, “Why do you withhold joy from yourself? …Why do we deny ourselves some of the most beautiful emotions and experiences provided to us in this beautiful Universe?”

I can tell you why I do it: Again, it's guilt. Every time I deferred that Asia trip over the last 30 years was because of guilt. Sometimes it was towards my family who might need me. Other times, it was towards a boyfriend at the time, who’d be left behind.

So I started 2023 with a resolution, “No boyfriends till you go to SE Asia.” The short version of the story is that I managed to keep that resolution. You can read the longer version here.

How I started 2023 without a boyfriend was because of a fantasy I’d had and deferred for 30 years. From September 2021 to August 2022, I was in a relationship with a man I had idealized since I was 16. He had been my boyfriend in high school, and we just never quite moved on. Through marriages (both of ours), children (his), and multiple moves to different cities and countries, we never forgot about each other and both, each in our own way, harbored a fantasy of ending up back together one day. In 2021, we finally did, and 11 months later, it ended in colossal heartbreak for me.

But again, what a joy (an eventual joy, haha) to release the weight of something you’ve wanted for 30 years. And, my god, what an invaluable life lesson it taught me. (But MY GOD was I really not smart enough to have known this already?! Geez!) The lesson: When you idealize a human being, you won’t see any of their flaws, and we are all flawed. None of us is ideal.

Nothing about this man looked good on paper. Literally everything was a red flag. When I say everything, I mean everything. Had I met him online or in a social setting as a perfect stranger and learned the things I learned about him, I never would have pursued a relationship with him. There was nothing about him or his current situation that made him an eligible candidate to be a boyfriend. And, to his credit, he told me this on many occasions (while sometimes simultaneously plowing ahead with our relationship, occasionally at lightspeed). When you idealize a person, you can find an explanation for everything. That part wasn’t his fault. It was mine.

I hope that 2022 was the last time I had to learn the lesson I first heard from Maya Angelou in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “When someone tells you who they are, believe them.” Ignoring that advice has been my entree into far too many relationships.

Instead, I was living the lines from Fleishman Is In Trouble, a book and later a mini-series about, in part, a sad-sack divorced dad who finds acceptance among his old friends from high school.

“It had been so long since he felt accepted, like he didn’t have to justify his existence, that people just took him on his own terms. Maybe this was the key – to spend time with people who knew you when you were all potential. Maybe, in some way, you remained all potential to them. Your mistakes were anomalies to them.”

Yes, all I saw when I looked at this man was potential. All his mistakes were anomalies to me.

It took getting over that first 30-year-old fantasy in 2022 to realize my 30-year-old dream in 2023.

I spent the first quarter of 2023 planning that trip – an exercise in courage. Hitting “submit,” “send,” “purchase,” “book” on piece after piece of that journey, feeling my belly go cold every time I booked another flight, another boat, another room, and then doing it again and again until there was no turning back. But I was scared until I got on the plane, all nerves and jitters, which only escalated as my departure drew nearer.

But within about 24 hours of landing in Chiang Mai, where I stayed for the first month of my trip, all that fear was replaced by bliss. I was safe, I was fine, and goddammit I had done the thing.

Over the course of those 10 weeks, I came to realize, and eventually started saying out loud, “I have never been happier in all my life.”

That bliss came first from being in true alignment with what I have long felt to be my highest calling: to see as much of this world as I can while I’m in it. It was a bliss that I feel every time I get back out there. I felt it when I moved to Brazil and on every subsequent visit, and I’ve felt it on solo trips to Malta, Sicily, Mexico, New Mexico and so on.

But on this last trip, the bliss was so much bigger. I mean, I felt like I was on something (and I was, but more on that later**). Part of the outsized bliss was the dopamine cascade I felt every time I packed my little carry-on for the next destination: an island in the southern gulf of Thailand, Bangkok, Singapore, Cambodia, numerous stops in Vietnam, and that many more in Japan. What a rush it was every few days to few weeks when I said, “Tomorrow I’m going somewhere new!” I confess, I was afraid I’d gotten addicted to this feeling and that I’d surely broken my brain’s internal reward system to a point that once I got back to Atlanta, I might never feel joy again. And, boy, doesn’t this speak volumes about our tendency to suppress or deny ourselves joy. I literally thought that if I kept getting so much of it, I might break my brain. I think some religions may say something similar about sex or masturbation, too, but I digress.

That bliss was also so all-encompassing, I was certain, because it was the first time I’d had the chance to learn that I could be completely happy all by myself. All the happiness I needed was waiting inside of me and I didn’t need a man to unlock it.

That awareness has brought me an enduring joy (that I refuse to suppress!) that far outlasted the trip. It has lasted me the whole year. And I made a bet that it would.

**During the colossal heartbreak of 2022, I started taking the antidepressant Wellbutrin. It worked wonders for me. I will be happy to elaborate on that with anyone who asks. There is no shame in needing that kind of help. When I started the medicine, in August 2022, I told my doctor I didn’t want to be on this for the rest of my life and that I didn’t think I’d need to be either. He agreed and promised to help me and support me in going off of it whenever I was ready.

Taking that pill every morning in Thailand and Vietnam eventually started to feel silly. Come on, I was on top of the world! So I wondered if it might be time to taper off. But I’m no dummy. I had to ask myself, is it this trip that’s got you feeling so great or is it these pills? Will you still be the happiest you’ve ever been in your whole life when you stop taking the pills? And if it’s the travel that’s got you so high, won’t you crash as soon as you get home?

As unlikely as it might have seemed, I decided that I really was just this happy and that I was going to stay this way. Halfway through my 10-week trip, at the bathroom sink of my hotel room in Central Vietnam, I decided to skip my pill that day. As my doctor directed, I dropped down to a pill every other day, then every third day, then every fourth, then once a week, until I took my last pill in Japan, the last week of my trip.

I still felt great, but the true test would be when I was both back to my old mundane life in Atlanta and also no longer taking happy pills.

When I first got home, in July, every time I reunited with people I hadn’t seen in 2.5 months – my family, my girlfriends, my running group, work colleagues – they all said the same thing. “You look different.” “You’re glowing.” “I’ve never seen you so happy.” And I’d respond honestly, “I am different.” “Yes, I think you’re right.” “I’ve never been so happy.”

Now, six months later, on the last day of 2023, the tan from Vietnam’s perpetual June sun has worn off, but, whether or not others can still see it, I do still feel the glow. That somehow didn’t fade. Nor did the newfound certainty that I am courageous and capable and that the source of my happiness was always inside me.

Untethered and Never Better

Ninh Binh, Vietnam
06/19/2023

I made a New Year’s resolution in 2023: No boyfriends till you go to southeast Asia.

A trip to Asia had been a dream of mine since I was in high school. Over the years, what I envisioned got more specific to eventually become three months spent living, working and traveling throughout southeast Asia. Relationships have caused me to backburner this trip more times than I know.

I’ve never specifically said, “I can’t spend three months in SE Asia. I have a boyfriend.” But having a boyfriend has always made it very easy for me to come up with other reasons as to why now wasn’t the time or this wasn’t the year. It’s always been very easy for me to give up things that I want and pieces of myself for other people, whether they ask me to or not. In the end, I wasn’t going to SE Asia because I didn’t want to manage the (mostly self-imposed) relationship-guilt and anxiety that I knew I would battle every day of such a long and faraway trip.

Though there were some plot twists, some moments when it was looking like I wasn’t going to pull it off, I did manage to narrowly escape the US without having a boyfriend.

And, friends, it has been a revelation.

I already knew that I experienced a lot of relationship anxiety during my solo travels. Feeling guilty for leaving them behind; worrying about whether I should check in more; feeling bad about being so in-their-face about what a great time I was having; feeling bad for having such a great time in the first place. But what I didn’t realize was that all of the anxiety I experienced while traveling, not just the stuff that was obviously about a boyfriend, was tied to my relationship. It’s the only explanation I have for what’s different now.

On every solo trip that I’ve taken, there’s been at least one moment on the trip when I have absolutely and irrationally fallen completely apart over something very small.

The example that always comes to mind was in Rabat, Morocco, when I couldn’t find milk. Every other day or so, I’d buy a small carton of milk (the only size available) for my coffee from the “store” next door. “Store” means the next-door-neighbor’s kitchen window out of which he sold basic staples. But one day he wasn't there. I texted my host, who was at work, to ask where else I could get milk. He explained where the closest place was, but I couldn’t find it. I suspect I just didn’t walk far enough, but after walking for a while and not finding it, I was overcome with a crippling and mostly irrational fear that if I kept going, I wouldn’t be able to find my way back. It wasn’t completely irrational. I was staying in a medina – a medieval walled, maze-like part of the city. But still. I was absolutely panicking — about the prospect of drinking my coffee black that day and about possibly getting lost. Soon, I was near tears and it wasn’t about milk anymore. I was cursing myself for being so stubborn and insisting on going to all these crazy places by myself, and then I was upset about being lonely, and then I was upset about being such a fraidy cat who wouldn’t find the store because she was afraid of getting lost in the medina (a fraidy cat who travels the world all by herself, mind you), and I just continued to unravel from there.

There has been at least one incident like this on every solo trip.

The triggering event is always something trivial, and it always devolves into “What the hell are you even doing here? You are all by yourself. Who do you think you are?”

Let me be clear: When I travel, 95% of the time is incalculable bliss. It’s why I take these big trips again and again and will continue to for as long as I am able. This is the thing that makes my soul sing, and when I am not traveling, it is the thing that keeps me awake at night. But there were always these bumps in the road on the journey that I had just chalked up to a fact of solo travel.

In fact, before this trip, I talked about these meltdowns with an advisor of mine, who has always been very supportive and encouraging of this trip over the years. She suggested I fill out a worksheet titled “Coping Ahead,” in which I would make a plan in advance for how I was going to handle the inevitable meltdown when it came.

But it hasn’t come.

I haven’t overreacted to any minor setbacks. I haven’t been afraid of anything – except of getting hit by a car in Hanoi, which I think is a totally rational fear that is actually helping keep me alive. I haven’t been lonely or gotten tired of being alone. And nothing has led me to say to myself, “What are you doing here all by yourself? Why did you think this was a good idea? Who do you think you are?”

In fact, who I think I am is a badass, and I have celebrated being here all by myself from the moment I arrived.

My flight over here was scheduled to land in Chiang Mai at 10pm on a Sunday. I’d arrive at my lodging long after the staff had gone home, so I’d have to let myself in and find my room on my own, based on an instructional video they’d sent, showing me how to get in through the side door and the various keypads in which I’d enter my access code. I’d do this after dark in a strange foreign city that I actually didn’t know much about. I knew it wasn’t a big city though. I knew it was highly likely that the street would be deserted when the taxi driver dropped me off – and it was. I suspected that my first meltdown might take place at some point in this arrival sequence.

Before flying out of Atlanta, I checked in with a Facebook group of female expats who live in Chiang Mai. I told them all of the above and asked them whether this whole plan was safe. They assured me it would be safe and easy.

So I got into a taxi at the airport with the non-English speaking driver. I typed my destination into his phone and placed it and my fate in his hands. As we made our way down a street that was completely unknown to me, along a moat, and through an archway into the Old City, I said to myself, “Damn! I am brave!” And I couldn’t help but grin – a wide, open-mouthed grin – at all I had undertaken to get myself there and that I had done it all by myself, not fearlessly – there had been a lot of fear and anxiety leading up to my departure – but in spite of my fear. “Damn, Sonya!” I said to myself in the back of the taxi.

So far on this trip, I have taken 12 flights between 4 countries and 8 cities - and I still have 1 month, 3 more flights and 1 more country to go. Getting in and out of each country has been a major undertaking. There were visas for several of the countries. Shot records. Letters from my doctor explaining the more-than-30-day supply of prescription drugs in my suitcase in the unlikely event my bag was searched. Proof of onward travel out of each country that required a visa. So much research, planning and work. And so many opportunities to have a meltdown.

But I don’t know what words could make clear just how perfectly happy and at ease I have felt for every minute of this trip. I attribute it to being untethered.

I think that on those other trips, when I had someone to worry about back home, I was so tied up in anxious, guilty knots all the time about traveling without them that all it took was an empty milk carton to push me over the edge. Because, arguably, this should be my hardest trip yet. I’ve never gone so far, for so long, to such a far-away time zone, and to countries so different from my own.

But everything has felt simple, easy and completely amazing. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in all my life than I am right now.

There was a period in my 30s – after my divorce and before I met the next person that I would have a long-term relationship with – when all I wanted was a boyfriend. I was so unhappily single that my sister, trying to show me the bright side, suggested I make plans to do all the things I wanted that might not be as easy to do if I were in a relationship. But my laser focus on finding a partner made me blind to any other desires. I couldn’t conjure up a single thing I might like to do in the meantime. It never occurred to me that that would have been the perfect time to travel. All of life was on hold until I had a boyfriend.

And then when I got a boyfriend, I put my life on hold again.

If I could get a message to my younger self, I’d say, Live your life. Do the things that you want to do. The things that make your soul sing. Do them now. Partners come and go. Even that partner that I was desperately seeking in my mid-30s, I found him, and we stayed together for eight years. But we’re not together anymore. You’re only in one relationship that will never end. There’s only one person that you will never be rid of and that’s yourself. That’s who you owe something to.