There is no gratitude here…
Yes. I have fallen prey, at times, to the idea that a daily gratitude practice will somehow improve my mental health, my goodness, my overall health and my happiness. I’ve tried to practice it, even going so far as to making daily notes in my journal.
But it all felt so forced. And I kept falling into the trap of finding things to be grateful for because other people don’t have them. “Well, at least you have food on the table and a roof over your head!” It put me in a frame of mind of focusing on other people’s suffering as a way to trick my mind into not focusing on my own.
I have moments and hours and days where everything feels like crap: my body, my brain, even my soul seems to ache. I can’t muster gratitude. And this makes me feel like, on top of it all, I’m a bad person. I have moments when I feel like this cancer is something I could have prevented. I have moments when I feel like this is some sort of punishment. And who’s to say it’s neither of those things? Not that it really matters: the past is in the past and I can’t undo whatever I did to cause this to happen.
I’m not currently a fun person to be around. Maybe I never have been. Maybe what cancer is doing is allowing me to drop the mask, to not feel like I have to be “happy” all the time, to not present a clean and tidy house, a cheerful front of the consummate people pleaser. And maybe this is what it means to actually be me. Maybe I’m just an ungrateful person with no energy who is currently relying on everyone else to get things done. And maybe that’s ok.