Sad Truth about Happiness

Although I was an easy child, I don't believe that I was any happier than average. I had the usual sorrows and fears, all of which I felt it was important to conceal from my parents, who I believed were counting on me. I was, for example, from the time I was eight, acutely afraid of the dark, a mistrust that has never entirely left me. It isn't the darkness that worries me, but what it might contain the thing or person or beast that might, with a sudden inhalation, a low growl, and a scurry of nails against the floorboards as the only dreadful, brief forewarning, spring out to seize me, then pull me limb from limb or worse. A fear of the unknown, unseen, unseeable. I do my best to rationalize away the remnants of this fear that still linger, and I am usually successful.