Photo by Julien Lavallée on Unsplash
At work, bored, I took a bunch of personality quizzes online. One of the quizzes was about gratitude. I don’t really think of myself as a person who (sadly) is very appreciative of who I have in my life, what I have in my life and where I am in my life. But, I ranked very high on the quiz and it made me think.
There are so many things I wish I could change. The size of my apartment. The length it took me to graduate college. The hours of sleep I get each night. How many glasses of wine I can control myself to drink or not drink. The distance from my apartment to my office and the directions of the bike lanes during my route.
I wish I could change the size of my swimmer’s shoulders and runners thighs. I wish I could change the foods I crave. I wish the salads I love weren’t so expensive. I wish my parents lived closer to me and sometimes, I wish I had a roommate to keep me company. I wish I could change how long winter lasts in Boston and the texture of my hair. But, regardless of all these silly things, I am so grateful.
I’m grateful because I’m alive. And I am grateful for every single person, moment, thing, struggle, success, disappointment, paycheck, night out, personal day off of work, the list is endless.
I look back over the past three years and it has been a lot. I struggled and went through periods of insanity, isolation, starvation, depression, paranoia, mania, anxiety, stress, delusion and so much more. But I’m alive, here, and I’m so lucky.
I look back over the past few years as I come up to my 25th birthday and think of all that could have gone wrong. There are so many different scenarios that could have led me to not being here, writing this post.
But I’m beyond lucky, blessed and humbled. I have a great family. I have great healthcare providers. I have the best friends. I have a body that came back to life after I tried to stop it from functioning. I have a bank account that allows me to eat food, commute to work, exercise, feed my cats, put clothes on my back and pay my rent.
I’m also so lucky because I have luxuries like seeing my dad at least once a month, living so close to not only my best friends but having access to the arguably the best healthcare in the country. I’m lucky for having a job that gives me an income and isn’t too stressful for my bipolar. I’m lucky that my body is able to exercise and reap the physical, emotional and mental benefits. I’m lucky that I have two little kitties who give me unconditional love even when I leave them home alone almost every day.
And when I think about all the things I wish I could change, I wish I could change that because I’ve been given a wonderful deck of cards despite the tough ones. I’ve been diagnosed with a handful of DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual) diagnoses. I pick up more than a handful of prescriptions each month. But it’s not completely about the hardships.
I have all of these amazing people, places, things around me. It’s that I’m lucky and beyond fortunate I can keep going because of that. I can keep showing up. I keep trying and sometimes, I fail. But I can forgive myself and just be grateful because, at the end of the day, my journey could have gone on a different path. I’m right where I need to be.
