(rachel)(2)

i'm thankful to be staying in my teenage bedroom for now, even though i'm almost 30, in the house my mother moved into when i was 13 or so; i'm thankful for the ways in which it is both comforting and disorienting. i'm thankful for how the morning light comes in through the bedroom windows; i'm thankful for how effective the shades are and how dark i can keep the room if i just pull them down.

i'm thankful that despite my reservations and childish hang-ups i've been talking with friends this week, being honest with them about how i've been doing (not well) and letting them be honest with me about caring about me, and about their own lives. i'm thankful that while occasionally it feels as though my irrational anxieties and fears are proven nightmarishly true, most of the time when i test them in the real world they fall away and help me see that they were always just a fear, no more. i'm thankful for the text notification sound on my phone, the soft insistence that i'm here, i'm here. i'm thankful to be called baby, a voice on the other end of the line.

i'm thankful for memes, and how even though i'm sometimes annoyed at myself for the way that they've become so present in my internal vocabulary with myself, it's also nice to have a lexicon so simple and direct and stupid to conceptualize my feelings in. i'm thankful for the meme i made up in my head earlier — carrie bradshaw typing into her computer "what if i was the video i should have been pivoting to all along" — and how even though i won't post it i got a chuckle out of it.

i'm thankful for lack of clarity, for the quietly unbearable murkiness, for letting things stay confusing without trying to fix them or even understand them really. i'm thankful that while this is deeply uncomfortable and sometimes feels impossible i think these are muscles i will be glad i am exercising. i'm thankful to allow myself to rest, to not know, to sleep and wake up alone in bed. i'm thankful for nightmares, i'm thankful to wake up from them, i'm thankful to fall back asleep safe.

- rachel (8/26/17).