I am not grateful. It's not that I don't want to be, and believe me, I'm sorry that I'm not...But I'm not grateful, at least in the ways that will help me survive life apparently. So that being said, Thanksgiving was a failure I guess. I need someone to get me out of this and I don't mean God. If God sends someone ok, but I need a flesh and blood person to fix something for me since a flesh and blood person wrecked it in the first place. God put people here for a reason, not just so that we could "lean on Him" or this grand imaginary image of who we think he is.
Last Sunday, Monday and tonight I cried, literally weeping wailing and practically rending my clothes (my pjs are pretty much toast anyway so its unfortunately not as dramatic as it seems) for about 2-3 hours at a time. If you consider that my little bouts of mourning are usually 20-30 minutes long and just that puts me through the ringer, the nights this past week has left me physically exhausted. Mourning my mom, mourning Nelson, mourning loss chivalry, mourning the lack of adherence to my religion, mourning my allergies to cats, mourning every weakness I ever ever had, mourning the half of the freshman 15 I've so timely gained nearing the end of my first semester...And when someone asks you what's wrong instead of a torrent of things I just mentioned that are making my heart heavy I just burst into another round of broken crying and deep heart-rending sobs because, of course, I'm in such a state I can't even prioritize which one is pulling its barbed hook out of my heart at that time. When one big thing hurts most other things they may have just stung a little hurt a lot lot more.
I think a baby step to gaining back my gratitude would be to use the phrase "at least". "At least" I have cool nail polish on. At least I can sleep in until 8 am some days. At least my room is Pooh Bear yellow and that I can even see colors. At least I can cry...That's the cynic's grateful scale. But Zion was right, I lost grateful, but along with a lot of things I've lost lately in the light of self discovery I think I'm going to have to leave that one behind for a little bit too.
I find this waiting period of seeing what I develop into isn't so uncomfortable as I thought it was going to be if I ever thought about it at all. I knew in coming here to Memphis I would be free from a lot of restrictions that my otherwise curious and rebellious nature (the worst combo in the world lest I be underdramatic) would not have allowed me to break. In that freedom comes a series of trial and errors. If you want to get an idea of how many failures vs successes there've been I'd suggest coming to watch the predictable Sunday night wail. Days before weeks begin are the worst, just ask the Bangles.
I'm not going to pretend things are ok because really they're not. I'm not going to kick against the pricks, I am going to cry every damn time I'm truly sad that I can't have something I want. I'm going to take that sedative if I get anxious because I can't stand being around Daniel when I know we could have been good together were it not for him. I will say everyday that I miss my mom and scoff from a mixture of bitterness and self-pity at the thought that her spirit's really by my side. I will send dramatic texts to each past potential boyfriend telling them I hate them and love them and want them to grow up because they're stupid and I wish i could punch them in the heart...
Well, I won't do that last one because wisdom has finally taught me this lesson: certain people are walls and instead of hitting my head against them trying to break through, I'm going to pretend those walls don't exist and just walk on by.
Matrix style.
