Over the last few months, I’ve become aware of an unconscious dynamic at work inside me. Somehow it seems I haven’t believed that I deserve to be happy, or perhaps it’s that I didn’t believe any happiness that I experienced would last, and so I would self-sabotage within a few hours of feeling intense joy or pleasure. I would compartmentalise the beautiful experience – even though I was still immersed in it and there was no obvious reason to do so – and my state of being would begin to darken. Often I would actively (but unconsciously) start to seek out a crisis or drama with which to distract myself from the delight I had been experiencing, as if to protect myself from the disappointment of having it taken from me by turning away from it myself. Better to pull the rug out from under myself than to wait for it to be pulled out by someone or something else.

This dynamic was understandable given the events and circumstances of much of my life, when, time and again, I learnt that happiness was both illusory and elusive, and wouldn’t last. It’s no longer valid today, though, when my life is so patently good. And yet the unhelpful dynamic has persisted, even as I have become aware of it and desired so greatly to rewire myself in order to be able to enjoy happiness for extended periods of time.

So you can imagine the joy that I feel in having succeeded in sinking deeply into a state of bliss that lasted for a full five days last week. I love the happiness that I see shining out of me in this photo, taken during a much-anticipated holiday with my man. And of course photos are carefully curated snapshots of moments that may not reflect the full reality, but for once in my life, I can say that a photo taken of me at any moment during that time would radiate the same joy. For me, and for Chris, who has had to watch me distance myself from the love and happiness that he was celebrating, but from which I had turned away after a few short hours so many times over the years, this is a miracle.

You might think that it’s easy to be happy on holiday in a tropical paradise with my phone off, the world shut out and nothing to do but enjoy myself, but I can tell you from experience that this has never been true for me. In the past, I have always found some issue to trigger me or on which to fixate and felt my mood begin to curdle in a matter of hours. This time, it was different. The inner work I’ve been doing has paid off. It’s not that our time away was without challenges, but for the first time in my life, I found myself in a timeless state of such peace and happiness – with myself, with Chris – that I wanted to stay there. Forever.

Now I know that there is not some inherent inability in me to be happy, with a depressive streak always lying in wait, as I have feared. Just knowing that I have the capacity to feel lasting joy and to be truly present is sparking happiness inside me, even back in the sometimes harsh realities of life in the ‘real’ world.

I am forever changed by this experience. The magic of Azura is still alive in me this morning and I can access it whenever I choose to. I will not forget this holiday, this happiness, as soon as I’ve finished unpacking my suitcase. I will not put it behind me as though it never was. It will live on in every cell of my body for the rest of my life.

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