Town/character name: Chambers; Mayor Phebe
Friend code: in sidebar
Contest topic:the happiest place on Earth
I don't think my entry is really valid because I am using it as a catharsis of sorts after a really bad day, and I am probably making a huge mistake in judgement if I actually hit the "enter post" key, but here goes. Don't take this seriously because this contest is more about happiness in a totally different way than I will present mine. Mine is...a depressing sort of happiness even tho it freed me at the same time - if that makes any sense at all! So just let me air it and if I'm lucky most people will "tldr" it!
This is weird, but I'll share it anyway. The happiest place on Earth for me these past several years is inside my own mind because I always flash back to the office of the Courthouse in the city I grew up in. My father's father, my grandfather, had deserted my dad and his mother while she was giving birth to him in 1930.
We never knew his father's real name because he lied to everybody his whole life and now I know more about him than anyone, and the mysteries of this man who made so many people miserable and directly lead to the deaths of my step-grandmother and infant aunt and uncle in 1910 affected my family deeply.
I went to the courthouse on the 18th anniversary of my dad's death. With the help of a nice woman there named Margie, we dug a bit into my grandfather's activities in Chicago in 1930 and finally unearthed his real name. It took almost an entire day and has now sent me searching thru archives online in Pennsylvania.
I now know who I am and where I come from, so to speak. This story of one of the most awful black sheep ancestors, my own grandfather, has, even tho I cried and cried and was in shock from his awful deeds, finally freed me one day. I am still digging into his life (he died in 1937, nearly 30 years before I was born, but he has haunted me my entire life) but that one day in the Courthouse, and that nice woman gave me the identity I never really knew until that day I never truly had.
Bad or good, your ancestors shape you, especially when their actions directly impact you in life. Thru the revelations I uncovered, I have discovered a few family members I never knew I had. Among your search for your past you can find wondrous things in the present.
Okay, this could have gotten really depressing, and I cannot explain here, nor should I, but I cannot express how much that one day changed my entire life and outlook. I never knew I was a "slave" to the past until I uncovered it. Things during my life with my father that never made sense now have fallen into place. Mostly.
The happiness didn't really happen that one day - but it comes to me now and every day that I live I am grateful I unearthed the poison in the soil so that good could grow again. That sounds metaphorical, but that's how I feel.
The happiest place I can be NOW, and it began that day in that Courthouse, is in my own head that I so much more know who I am, why events unfolded the way they did while I was growing up, and why my father insisted that I find the answers before it was too late.
I found enough to go on and enough to have brought some answers and some measure of peace to a very tormented family branch.
Okay... ignore me and move on! Gah...I hope I'm not suspended or anything...
everything just made me happy especially learning about Queen Sisi's life & history 
