Can I be happy without suffering?
I am in college now, yet part of me still lives in the quiet glow of birthday candles.
Every year, I closed my eyes and wished for the same thing: that my family would become whole again. I repeated that wish for more than a decade, as if repetition could bend reality. It took me years to understand that children do not wish because they are naive—they wish because hope is the only power they have.
I grew up learning that love could be withheld. When my father was away, my stepmother forced me to eat what she knew I despised.
She would grip my face and push it into my mouth while I cried. I was 7, already washing my clothes by hand, my small arms aching as if labor were proof of obedience. At night, she turned off the electric fan, leaving me sweating in the dark, my skin marked by mosquito bites. I remember lying awake, wondering what flaw in me justified the punishment.
I began to believe that suffering must be correction—that pain was evidence of my inadequacy. I was not a difficult child. I was simply dependent. And dependency, I learned, is dangerous when placed in the wrong hands. Even small gestures confused me.
When she held my hand while crossing the street, I mistook proximity for affection. I interpreted survival as care. When one grows up deprived of gentleness, even the bare minimum feels like grace. There were other forms of violence, quieter but just as formative.
An aunt entrusted with my care disciplined me in ways that filled me with dread. I learned that authority does not guarantee morality.
That adults, too, can fail in their duty. I did not have the vocabulary for injustice then. I only knew the instinct to shrink, to silence myself, to endure. From this, I formed a philosophy of love: That it must be earned through suffering. If I endured enough, perhaps I would be worthy. If I gave enough, perhaps I would not be abandoned.
I carried this belief into adolescence, where I became the giver—the supportive friend, the dependable “Ate,” the one who absorbed others’ pain quietly. It felt noble. It felt virtuous. It also felt necessary.
Then I fell in love.
At first, I believed I had finally been chosen. But slowly, I began to feel measured. Compared. Adjusted.
He admired other girls openly. I recalibrated myself to fit his gaze. I abandoned hobbies, friendships, and even my dream university when he presented me with an ultimatum: follow him or lose him.
I chose him, believing that sacrifice was proof of devotion. The day before classes began, he cheated on me. What unsettled me most was not anger, but recognition. The pattern was familiar.
Once again, I had equated suffering with loyalty. Once again, I believed that shrinking myself was an act of love.
Philosophers speak of moral responsibility—of the obligation to care for those who depend on us. Children are the most vulnerable among us. When adults fail them, the damage is not merely emotional; it reshapes their understanding of justice. It teaches them that pain is ordinary, that harm is survivable, that endurance is virtue. But endurance is not the same as love.
Through reflection, especially through the lens of care ethics, I began to see that what was missing from my childhood was not discipline or resilience, but relational responsibility.
To care is not simply to provide food or shelter. To care is to protect dignity. To respond with empathy. To ensure that vulnerability is met with safety, not exploitation. When that care is absent, a child internalizes the failure. She concludes that she must be the defective one.
For years, I believed I was unlovable. That I required improvement before I deserved gentleness. That happiness, if it existed, would always demand payment in pain. Now I am questioning that belief.
Is suffering truly the prerequisite for depth? Must love wounds before it heals? Or have I simply normalized what was never meant to be normal?
I am beginning to suspect that my deepest mistake was not loving too much, but misunderstanding love entirely. I thought it required self-erasure. I thought it demanded silence. I thought staying, no matter the cost, was moral. But perhaps morality also includes the self. Perhaps I, too, am someone to be cared for.
To choose a future that honors my dreams is not selfishness. To leave spaces where I am diminished is not betrayal. To want love that feels safe is not weakness. It is a reclamation of dignity.
Some days, I still feel like that child whispering wishes into the dark, hoping happiness will arrive if I endure long enough. But I am slowly realizing that happiness is not the reward for suffering. It is the result of refusing to accept harm as destiny.
Maybe I was never unlovable. Maybe I was simply taught that love and pain were inseparable—and now I am learning to untangle them.
If I was not loved gently as a child, I cannot change that past. But I can question the philosophy it left behind.
If love was never supposed to hurt, then why did hurting feel like the only proof it was real?
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Althea Balladares, 18, is an accounting student currently taking ethics.
