It's not quite the new year yet, but I don't believe in saving gratitude for the moments in which it is required, and tonight I'm so grateful for the things that have gotten me through this year that I am not going to wait a week to say, thank you.
First of all, to this incredible, physical body I have been given- I'm grateful to my eyelashes for growing back every time I tore them out, for my legs holding me up through shifts I thought I couldn't endure after days without food, my heart for simply surviving the hours-long panic attacks that made me feel like I was going to explode, my mouth for singing my lungs through the same attacks. I'm grateful to the cellulite and spider veins on my thighs that appeared along with the twenty pounds I desperately needed, and to my belly for learning to keep food down on a daily basis.
I'm also grateful to the teachers who were there at three in the morning with wisdom to offer when I needed it, and presence always, the ones who encouraged me and critiqued my work and taught me to stop trying to make things fit together into one simple whole and instead make multiple beautiful and different and complex things. I'm grateful to my grandparents for giving me a place to stay when I needed to get away, but only barely, and to my sisters for being awesome enough to miss, and to my parents for paying my therapy bills. And speaking of therapy, so grateful, so endlessly, eternally grateful to my therapist for pulling me through the darkest months of this year and helping me to cultivate real compassion for myself. Without her holding me accountable it would have been so easy to slip back into the person that I thought was myself, instead of accepting and growing into the person that I want to be and am actively becoming.
I'm grateful to the friends who had to leave for the time they had to give, and to the friends who stayed even though I am aware I was incredibly difficult to love. I'm grateful for the cheesecake on heartbroken days, the signed books, the couches to crash on, the miserably failed trips to the ocean, the late nights, the reblogged selfies, and all the other gifts those friends gave me. So many of those things were life saving without their knowing it, and nothing more so than the gift of their time and support and love.
(I'm also grateful to my partner for making me realize that a) I am not as smart as I think I am b) I am smarter than I realize c) there are a lot of incredible people and d) I care far too much about laws. I can forgive the puns in exchange for the hours of interesting conversation and the kind of overwhelming happiness.)
Every year I am grateful for the people and things in my life, if not to the extent that I am this year. But this year I'm not just grateful for what I have, but proud of who I am and what I have done.
I'm proud that I made the decision to change my life. I'm proud that I stopped taking medication, and I'm proud that I started drinking water and eating some food every once in a while. I'm proud that I managed to end my semester with a 3.6 GPA, and, more importantly, a confidence in my talents and passion. I'm proud of myself for learning how to anchor myself through mood swings, and for becoming a much better singer through my favorite grounding exercises. I'm proud of myself for writing beautiful things that I take pride in. I'm proud of myself for remaining a staunch sucker for falling in love despite the fact that I am terrible at it. I'm proud of myself for surviving experiences that I thought I would never get out of, and for learning how to use my anger to save myself and help others. Most of all, I'm proud of myself for learning to actively practice joy in my life, no matter how my mind is telling me to feel.
I'm just... proud. For the first time in my life, I am proud. I love the people I have been blessed with, and I am learning to love the body and mind that I have been given.
