A melancholy person

I've kind of gotten used to the idea of myself as inclined to be a mope. A melancholy person, a person with anger issues, whose nature it is to linger low. But-- I accepted this with the caveat that I wasn't always this way. That this is a recent development, based on the unprecedented level of stress in my life in recent years. I used to be a mellow person, a contented, vital person. And maybe if I move past this stuff, I can be that mellow, contented, vital person again. Because that's the person I really was.
 
But tonight something occurred to me. The last time I was like that? I was less than eighteen years old. A child. Before I went away to school, before I left my parents' house. I have never been like that in my entire adult life. I was a happy child. I am a melancholy adult. I have never been anything but a melancholy adult. As a fully formed person, this is the person that I am.

Maybe I can be mellow, contented, vital someday. But I have lost the comfort that I could "revert," that I already had this inside me, as part of me, maybe even the true me. Like getting back to my old weight. But I will have to become an entirely new person. I will have to become something entirely different than what I am.

Because as long as I have been a person, I have never been anything but melancholy.