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Happiness is most likely the weirdest feeling there is. It’s not just because it’s rarer than the others or more difficult to achieve, but because you don’t notice its absence before you finally feel it again. To Mark Hoppus this realization hit while he was standing on stage in front of thousands of people cheering at him, when he heard his name being called out by a voice that always managed to catch his attention wherever he heard it.
It was the first break between songs since they had walked onto the stage, on the very first blink-182 show in five years, and when he looked to his left to see a wide grin on Tom DeLonge’s face, the brown eyes sparkling with joy, he finally understood he hadn’t felt true happiness in years. It flooded him now, warm feeling spreading through his body like nothing else ever could, making him feel fuzzy and dragging his lips into a toothy smile that made his eyes shine and crinkle from the corners.
He had thought he had been happy, he had fully believed it up until now. Of course the first year or two had been very bad for him, threatening to push him to do things he would regret, but he had recovered from the depths of depression and gotten better. It was clear now that the feelings he had thought were happiness had just been lack of sadness and weird comfortableness.
But at this moment, Mark was happy again. That he could say with complete certainty. He could feel it in his heart, pumping trough his veins and warming up his whole body. Just looking at Tom on the other side of the stage, talking into the microphone and joking how he had noticed the sweaty bodies in the audience had made Mark hard, hearing that familiar voice roll out easily and excitedly, made everything so much clearer for him. So much simpler.
Mark had been so broken for so long he had gotten used to the feeling of emptiness and the weighing sadness, started associating the lack of depression as being happy and content. Now he could feel the real, strong emotion welling inside of him and fixing what the pain and grief had torn apart in him over and over again as the years had gone by.
They always said the person who broke you couldn’t fix you, but Mark disagreed. Tom had destroyed him to the point he could barely stand up without collapsing under the utter anguish; now it was more than obvious that Tom would have to be the one to fix him as well. Nobody else could ever fill the empty, gaping hole that had been left in Mark’s heart as his best friend had walked out of his life, taking with him Mark’s whole world and tearing everything apart.
But now that dark void was gone like it had never existed in the first place, the happiness filling it to the brim with the smile on Tom’s face, the look he gave him, the words he said, the way he talked.
For the first time in years Mark could see how far away he had been from what he thought he already had, and all it had taken was for him to finally reach the point of truly feeling the emotion again. All he had needed to do was to be where he belonged, with the person he belonged with, for him to realize how blind he had been for so long.
It only took a second for it all to register from the moment he heard his name rolling easily out of Tom’s mouth and his head automatically bobbing up to look at his friend. It took only a second for Mark to understand this right here was what they called true happiness.