ab initio, ad infinitum

grateful.

HEY Y'ALL! i hope you all are doing well, staying hydrated and healthy and safe and doing something that makes you happy!  this is a short piece that i just wrote in one sitting just now, so please excuse the ramble-y and mistake-ridden nature of it. in all honestly, i had no plan for this piece, but i wasn't super surprised where it ended up. so while we're on the topic, september is suicide prevention awareness month. please please please reach out, i know that it can be really hard to accept at times, but you are not alone. ever. please keep going, because there is so much. i love you. do good, be well. <3 

G R A T E F U L.

Grateful.

It's a feeling that fills you up with beams of warm light, thawing you from the inside out. It's a feeling that makes you feel so full that you may just burst, brimming with contentedness and open-eyes and incandescent smiles. It's a feeling that brings peace and tranquility and calmness to your soul, letting you breathe easy.

I'm so grateful every single day.

Some days I'm astounded by it, but then again, I'm reminded by all the things there are to be grateful of. It's so easy to get swept away by the negatives, by everything going wrong, by all that is wrong. It's easy to get distracted and forget about the unbelievable amount of good there is as well.

Let this serve as your reminder.

There is good. So fucking much, it's actually kind of ridiculous. Sometimes overt, sometimes subtle, sometimes both, good is everywhere you turn. Good is in every human, and it's in every act you take to try and make this world a little better than it was before. It's your friends checking in on you, it's stranger's smiles on the street, it's the sound of laughing ringing in the air from the neighbourhood park, it's the minutes you give yourself to breathe.

Good is in the small acts of kindness that are littered throughout are day, it's the random compliments, it's the wanting to help people, it's the bigger goals to improve the world that you work towards. It's a tip, it's letting someone have a turn, it's the cute animal videos on the internet.

There is so much good. There are people who band together to create a lasting change in the face of injustice, because it's the right thing to do. There are people acknowledging their screw-ups and trying to learn from them. There are people who constantly strive for self-improvement. There are people who are always willing to lend a hand. There are people who sing and laugh and love and want and feel and are so very human and so very good. There are people who fuck up and still are good, because good is not an all-or-nothing. Good is a balance, good is a constant goal, good is an ideal. 

Good is kindness.

Good is love.

Good is trying.

And there is so much of it, and I'm so very grateful for all of it.

I'm grateful for the world around me. Because it truthfully can be an ugly, disgusting shithole some of the time, but it's overwhelming beauty cannot be denied either. The world is where we are, the world is the house for all of the good too, the world has so much.

I'm grateful for these world where all the people I love are. Where all the things I love are - a list that seems infinite, growing as I fall in love with the world a little more every day.

It is on this world where music is made - where guitar strings are plucked, and rhythms are beat out, and melodies are hummed, and pianos are played - the very sounds which moves me to tears on a daily basis. 

It is on this world where we make connections with humans and share all the pain and strife and joy and triumphs with others. It's on this world where I can taste so many stunning and vibrant tastes and textures. 

It's on this world where petrichor and the scent of lavender and vanilla and chocolate and the seaside exist. It's in this world where I can see beautiful oceans and stunning lakes and jagged mountain tops and gentle snow and elegant icicles and sunny wheat fields and swooping valleys and endless flowers and luscious forests and so much. 

It's on this world where I can touch the smooth velvet of skin, the soft petals of flowers, the silky slipperiness of water, the hardness of callouses. 

It's on this world that I get to feel so much, for better or worse.

And I'm grateful so that.

I'm grateful for getting to be in this world where I take up space, where I know that I can take up space and that I deserve to take up space.

I'm grateful for my body that supports me and a mind that guides me and a soul that fuels me. I'm grateful for people - for their stunning minds and gleaming intellects, for their warm smiles, for their twinkling laughs, for their beautiful emotions. 

I'm grateful for this place that constantly takes my breath away.

I'm grateful for the skies that I stand below - their effortless gradient and constant swirling into new combinations and dancing of light. I'm grateful for clouds, how they fluff up, how they come in different shapes, how they glide, how light illuminates them, how completely and utterly beautiful they are. I'm grateful for sunsets and sunrises, for the yellows and pinks and purples and deep indigos and oranges to all come together as the entire world lights up, and for a brief moment, the world goes gold. I'm grateful for the night sky, for the stars and planets that glimmer, some light years away, for the constellations and the stories they tell, for the rare shooting stars and asteroid and comets. 

I'm grateful for these mundane things - the most simple and every day of things - that never fail to take my breath away. I'm grateful for those little things that make me fall in love a little with the world, bit by bit. The things which remind me why it's so good to be alive, to take up space, to breathe air until my lungs are full and my heart is roaring.

This world has so much. Both good and bad, both right and wrong, both ugly and beautiful. Sometimes, it's a delicate balance between the extremes, oftentimes it's both coexisting at once. And that's okay. You can be grateful for it all. You can be grateful for the good and bad and right and wrong and ugly and beautiful, and be grateful that all of it can happen at once.

You can be grateful for things in retrospect, you can be grateful for things preemptively, you can be grateful in the present.

Some days it will be hard to drown out the bad and the negative and some days it will be a struggle to be grateful, and that's okay. Just don't forget the moments that have made you grateful in the past, and the once you may get to look forward to. Know that life continues, and more and more pathways to feel grateful open up. Knowing that gratefulness is a choice, not one that is always easy or, hell even possible some days, but it comes again. 

Just know that you deserve all the moments that make you grateful, and deserve to have an infinite list of things that make you grateful, and that you deserve to take up space.

You deserve to feel so much love that it feels like you may explode from the sheer overwhelmingness of it. You deserve to feel peace deep within your being. You deserve to feel so much happiness so brightly that even the sun envies you. You deserve to meet people who will forever change your world for the better, you deserve to exist organically. You deserve all the beauty this world has to offer.

You deserve to feel grateful for your life, you deserve feeling grateful that you exist.

And one day - come when it may - you will. Promise. But just in case you don't feel that just yet, know this: the fact that you're here?

I couldn't be more grateful for that.

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