This thanksgiving feels more important than ever.
let me tell you why.
This year, i’m having trouble being thankful and I feel bad even saying that. Thanksgiving is a time to look back on the last 12 months and express gratitude towards the people you’ve loved, the places you’ve gone, the experiences you’ve had and the life you lived. I’m gonna be honest, this year was a crap fest for me and I have been doing more surviving that actual living. I’ve been in my lowest emotional state of the last 5 years, i’ve been forced into a work closure not one, not two, but THREE times. There have been cancelled vacations and honestly it feels like everytime I have something to look forward to, it gets taken away so i’ve just stopped getting excited. As Spencer Hastings once said, “that’s the thing about hope, it breeds eternal misery.”
I always chuckle to myself when I read encouraging posts like “one day, we’ll look back on these pandemic years and laugh” or jokes about excluding 2020 from the history books because I, for one am not laughing. I have permanent emotional damage from this. I know I am speaking from a place of privilege, but to me, this is the realest trauma that I know. This past year has challenged me and made me fight like never before, and as much as I want the fight to end, I’m trying and I mean REALLY TRYING to be thankful for it. Not so much the pandemic, that I will never feel anything but loathing for, but thankful that i’ve learned how strong I am. I’ve never considered myself a resilient person, but I got through 7 months of no work and minimal socialization. I’m thankful for the friends and family who stuck by me. Thankful that I had lots of spare time with the little boy who made me an auntie. Thankful that even though we had a closure, I got a whole month of seeing my best friend after a year of only seeing her through a screen. Having the time off from working was brutal on me, but I found my love of cooking again. Going back to work was that much more exciting because It was something I hadn’t done in so long, and now I can honestly say that there isn’t a group of people i’d rather spend 45 hours of my week with.
As thankful as I am for everything, i’m TIRED. I’m tired of going to work everyday thinking that it might be my last, because that’s happened before. I’m tired of not looking forward to anything because the disappointment of an inevitable cancellation is too much to handle. It’s always uplifting to hear how ‘strong’ I am, but I’m tired of needing to be strong. I simply just want to be. I’m ready to not be living in a pandemic anymore, I’m just so exhausted from keeping up with new restrictions and keeping my head above water.
I’ll be the first to admit that this year was horrible, and it will not be one I’ll speak of fondly to my grandkids, but happiness and light are there. Let’s not forget that we’re all human, and we’re all just doing our damn best. Please take a moment today to think about the good things that life has given you this year and to BE KIND. this year has been a struggle for us all but the only way to get through it is together ❤️ Stealing another quote, this time from the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, “being happy isn’t having everything in your life be perfect. Maybe its about stringing together all the little things and making those count more than the bad stuff.”.
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