| This is not a book. This is me having a mental breakdown and attempting to define it and explain how I feel using HSL's metaphor. Probably cringe, but if you read it that's on you because this is your warning. |

A person's heart is like a jar. If you fill it with the wrong things, or fill it too much, it's going to break. If you don't fill it at all, it remains empty and purposeless.

A jar, much like a person's heart, can be broken. It can have cracks it it. It can be cracked easily, and if you break a person's jar, you break them too.

Jars can be filled with different things. You can fill it with candy, which comes in different flavors. You can fill it with objects or trinkets, which come in different shapes and colors.

If you fill the jar with the wrong things, it may break. Fill it with razors and the jar may be damaged. Fill it with cheap candy, and it will decompose, rotting on the inside.

A person's jar is different for the individual. Some people's jars are filled completely; some are half-full; some are filled to a quarter. And some people's jars remain empty, filled with nothing at all.

Fill it with sweet candy, and it may remain a beautiful sight forever. Or the candy might rot, and you'll be stuck with a jar that has candy that's flavored sickly sweet.

Fill a jar with razors, and it might break from that. You can fill your jar with a lot of things. Trinkets, candy, keys, shells, rocks. Or you can leave it empty.

But what about the jar itself? Cracked, stable, empty, made with thin glass, made with strong glass, or maybe the lid's screwed on a little bit too tight to allow much inside.

By now you've probably realized that while 'jars' are a metaphor for the person's heart, candy and trinkets and the like are the things you fill it with. The most commonly named, love and happiness.

What's your jar like? And what's inside of it?

It's a legit question. I want to know.

My jar doesn't have cracks. It's not at risk of breaking.

But it has holes. The holes are medium, and there's some all around the outside glass. Enough to hold things in the jar, but spill them out eventually.

My jar isn't empty. But it isn't full either.

My happiness is like sand.

My love is like sand.

I often confuse the two. Because they're very similar to me. I act like they're not very, but it's hard to sort out who to call 'love' and who to call 'friend'. Not because I like to blur the lines of platonic and romantic, but because they both feel the same: they make me feel good. It's happy.

Love and happiness are like sand, and they feel good. I think it's all the same to me emotion-wise; love is happiness. And happiness is love.

My jar is full of sand. This is my happiness. It's sand.

There's plenty of it in the world! Plenty of happiness, everywhere. A ton of it.

But the holes cause the sand to pour all out. Sometimes slowly, and I keep happiness, that sweet, excited, bubbly feeling for a long time.

Sometimes it pours out fast, and I'm clinging to the final grains of happiness as it empties out.

But, when I'm doing something that makes me feel happy, or with someone that makes me feel happy, it's like a steady stream of sand is constantly being poured into my jar. Whatever is gone is replaced, and I'm happy.

But there are times where the holes drain out all the sand. I hate those times. To be happy, I need it without stopping. 'A steady stream of sand'.

I've been called an adrenaline junkie. They're not entirely wrong. I'll do anything for the feeling of happiness; I'm a bit addicted to it, always chasing it. Because if I don't feel happy, I don't feel anything.

I have a hope that the holes in my jar will be patched up someday. That the sand will go from sand to something else, candy or trinkets or marbles. Something a lot steadier, a lot more present, a lot less light and quick than sand.

That's my hope.

But for now, I'm content. I'm happy. So long as I feel this feeling, so long as the sand comes to replace the sand that leaves, the holes hold no relevance. A jar is a jar.

I'm not entirely sure if this was just confusing or if it's actually understandable.

In short, I'm trying to explain who and why I am; why I act like I'm always high, why I act so unused to being upset when I'm feeling down, why I sometimes take conversations a bit too far or whatever.

I just want to be happy. I'll say and do whatever it takes for that. If I come off as weird or a little too happy, I am. I'm happy. I'm not thinking, I'm just acting. Just desperate for more sand. More happy.

So if you haven't already said, then...

What is your jar like?

...

You read all this?

Wow.