Campaign of Gratitude: Day 1

This week I’m on a campaign of gratitude. It’s Thanksgiving week, and so I figure there’s no time like the present to do it. My goal is going to be to update at least 5 times this week and talk about something for which I am grateful. Shouldn’t be too hard.

Originally I started by making a list of what I wanted to talk about each day but a couple things happened that caused me to alter my subject for this first day. 1) I pulled out an old notebook this weekend to bring to yoga teacher training and, 2) a disturbing article I found online.

The notebook I happened to pull out was the one I used when I was in therapy with Jane my last semester at Murray. There were a couple journal entries in there. The most notable was the first entry, dated July 18th 2007. It was shocking reading the things I wrote:

“…How I feel is confused, chaotic, without control. I feel pressure from myself to get past this, pressure from others to do what they think is best and fear of letting everyone down.”

“I freak out when there are unknowns.”

“I’ve receded into a totally isolated place in my mind and I’ve kept myself from being really honest with even my closest friends and family.”

“Mood swings: I got the nickname of ‘Bipolar Jenny’ last year.”

“Now I am trying to face my demons and I intend to work past them. Now I feel vulnerable and chaotic all over again but the only way I know how to deal is unhealthy so I feel more out of control because I have no coping methods to turn to. I hate being vulnerable. I do not tolerate weakness on my part. I need to be a stonewall and a pillar of strength. I don’t want to be taken advantage of.”

I finished reading that first entry and it was weird how I could only remotely remember those feelings. It seemed to me I was reading about a third party. I was a little taken aback and simultaneously grieving for this girl. How could any single person have all of that going on in their head at one time? Such an unfair burden to carry. No one should live that way.

Then I moved to the next entry and was baffled once more.

July 19th 2007:

“You know, sometimes, I may freak out, but when the day is over there is one thing I know about myself and that is that I am strong and I will achieve the things I want. And I’m positive—I know I will get over this hurdle. Life can be a struggle but all it takes is knowing you can make it… with a little bit of work. And I am ready to work.”

Just one day later, there it was: hope and resolve. What a gift. How lucky am I that it was with me, literally, from the beginning. On July 18th I had hit the lowest point in my entire life to date. But on July 19th, I was already asserting my determination. I’m filled with so much pride for that girl. I’m actually at a loss for words. That girl was me. ME. I know when I wrote that second journal entry that I had no idea how impressive it was. I had no idea the implications. I wonder now if, as I was writing them then, I believed them. I mean, it’s clear I did on some level because I’m here now and I’m infinity times healthier and happier. One thing I know is that for as much as I yearned to recover, I certainly hadn’t really considered what life would be like once I had done so. I had no idea it could be so good and so free.

So this becomes the first subject of my gratitude this week. I know this seems like an egotistical way to start the week, but I maintain that until we find the light within, we cannot shine it out. But today, I am grateful for my strength, my resolve, my optimism. I had so much help along the way in my recovery but I also must recognize that without my own determination, I’d never be in the place where I am now. So I’m going to honor myself, give thanks to myself. I’ve done myself a huge deal of benefit in the past year and a half.

The other thing that brought this idea for day one’s gratitude is that I saw this article online: http://www.newsweek.com/id/170528.

It tears my heart out to think that anyone else is living the way that I do. It seems like it was one thing for me to have struggled but the idea of other people struggling is almost intolerable. No one should go through life that way. It’s just not fair. Something has to be done; these girls need to be reached out to. And I want to be one of those doing it. I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet and I don’t know what the community in Evansville is like, but I’ve got to do something. I have been given a great gift and it is only fitting that now, I should pass it on to someone who needs it, too.

literally/figuratively

Cut to the first time since my last post that I've had an ounce of "spare time" for blogging. From where did this sudden appearance of spare time come, you ask? Why, none other than a 3 hour layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. Yes, it is already that time. I'm headed to Connecticut for the nuptials of Erin and LB!

So a lot has happened in the past month-ish. Not the least of which was my foray into "assistant" at the yoga studio. Chris is preening me to take over the Intro to Yoga classes at the studio. In a thrilling turn of events, Chris approached me and wanted to become my mentor. We're bartering, like in the olden days. I help her out around the studio and in exchange she is giving me the tools I need to become a teacher. And she as good as offered me a spot teaching at the EYC. I knew after all those medical bills and the car accident that my Karma was in need of some re-balancing.

In other exciting news, I may or may not have had my last day at CMC. I got a job at Starbucks and I found a ridiculously cheap housing situation for January. Things are good!

And now we find me in North Carolina (this airport, incidentally, has FIVE Starbucks inside its walls. FIVE!) Flying is so interesting to me. From the plane, looking down at the Earth, it felt like I was looking at all the best bits of our planet: the tops of trees (and jeeeeeezus, the colors of NC trees in autumn actually brought tears to my eyes), the rivers winding through the land, the hills, the farms. I know we all have to have places to live, but I couldn't help but think that it was too bad all of those neighborhoods had to ruin the natural art that lay before me.

The juxtaposition was obvious and ironic. The trees were so perfect, the colors so beautiful, so effortless. And then these neighborhoods, with their houses all identical, trying to be perfect, beautiful, effortless. Oh, how they'd failed. I wondered if everyone had a chance to change their perspective, if they'd see it too. If they'd see how silly and disorganized these neighborhoods were. They looked like dice in a game of Yatzee the way they seemed so carelessly thrown down across the land. I wondered if people might see how we, as humans, can be so silly and disorganized in our struggle against what is natural and good.

If everyone could just see the bigger picture (literally? figuratively?), how different would the world be? I know it's not possible to see the bigger picture all the time, but sometimes, in instances like these, you get lucky enough to see it for just a fleeting moment. It oughta be treated like a mile marker. Like, now I have a reference point and so if there's any readjusting I need to do to my plan, then I have to tools to do it.

Readjust what? What plan? How does this relate to me?

Okay, I haven't figured that out yet. I've been up since 4:10 am okay? I'm not quite prepared to answer my own existential-plane-inspired musings. The point is, I know where I am (literally/figuratively).

impressionable me

It's amazing to me how the company you surround yourself with can influence your mentality. I know that I am my own person and I make my own choices and that I do these things for myself, but I can't deny that I take a little bit of something from the people I am around, and I think the same is true for most everyone else.

The past almost week or so I have felt happy and healthy. I think part of that is because of the company I'm keeping lately. I don't want to risk sounding like I'm amoreuse d'elle, so I won't go much farther than expressing my thankfulness for having met a person so quickly down here that I feel will be a life long friend. Our similarities keep surfacing and our differences seem to balance each other out.

I can't even express how neat it is to have met someone who is about as "go where the wind blows" as I am. It affirms that I'm not completely mad and that there is no reason to rush to bring my uncertainties certainty. It's a relief to find another outlet for accepting and embracing the spontaneous. It's been a long time since I realized the sincere openness of my horizons and actually was excited about it.

Friends really are where it's at, man.