What I have

 I tore open my computer just now. I want to write this while my mind is good, because when the demons come back to play, I want to remind myself that their battle doesn't last forever. 

My therapist asked me last week, "what are you proud of?"

I sat there in raw emotionlessness, as tears gripped my throat, and started to silently slip down my face. 

"nothing" I finally mumbled. 

She sat for a moment, "nothing?" 

I brought my eyes from mindlessly looking at the floor to look into hers, "everything I worked so hard for...I lost. I am proud of nothing right now."

I love to see the human side of my therapist, and when sad shock swept across her face, I kept going. 

"I worked really hard and got a job to support myself, I moved out, I had my own place to live my own car, took care of all my own bills, I had lost a ton of weight I felt SO good and so healthy. I started losing these things, but I found a relationship I really thought was it I mean he was SUCH a good guy- he had all the things everyone always told me I deserved and that I should wait for- everything, EVERYTHING I had worked so hard for...I have lost. And it's hard not to feel that what he turned out to be isn't what I deserved all along."

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I had been in that place for days. And have been for days since. It is still factually true that I have lost all of those things. But this morning I woke up, and after battling a cold all week, was given a snow day, and I was so thankful to be able to keep sleeping it off. When I finally dragged my lazy butt out of bed, I was able to make myself coffee with oat milk- because my parents always make sure I have some handy. I was then able to clean my room and put fresh sheets on my bed- and while doing so meditated on this very post I am no furiously trying to get out before it leaves my heart. 

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I just want to remember...to be thankful, always. It's so easy to focus on what I don't have, or what I have lost, and most often- that's where I have found myself these days. But even if I have lost everything, and I mean truly everything, but I still have breath in my lungs then I have breath in my lungs to keep going and to keep. on. trying. And right now, while I am in that place of thanksgiving, I want to tattoo it to my soul, so that God-forbid, should I ever find myself truly with nothing, I will wake up and choose to be thankful for His life-breathe still in me, because 

I. 

WOKE. 

UP. 

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I'm not gonna get it right. I will forget. In an hour, a day, or a year...and my demons will haunt me and play with my mind. But I will have a moment I can look to and say, "but remember that. Remember when you decided, you were going to embrace every opportunity you had to keep on going?"