Days of Gratitude - Five Days of Frabjousness and Panic Attacks

The Gratitude Group continues and it's time for another post.  I'm posting these mainly for myself.  On the Facebook group page all of these will just get lost but if I post them here I can then access them in moments if I'm having a bad day or a particularly bad hour and I will be able to see that the bad is only temporary and that the light will return - and that even in the bad days there is light to be found and celebrated.

The last photo here is important for the words:  You're Perfect Just The Way You Are.

It's true and it's taken me a long time to realise it. I'm still learning.  I was blunt with someone last weekend who was saying that she is imperfect, flawed on the grounds of being a bit weird.  I was so sad to hear someone say that.  Weirdness doesn't make something imperfect but we were in a church and they had been talking about how flawed and blemished (and sinful) we all are.  It takes a massive leap of faith and love to move past that kind of talk and to see people as essentially glorious wonders not as essentially inheritors of original sin, made ugly in some way by that inheritance.  At Broadacre sometimes you head people say that we are perfect in our imperfections.  Yes, we are.  You are.  I am.  Perfect.  We are perfectly us and yet spend so much of our lives trying to be imperfectly something else or thinking we are inadequate because we don't match the image of some flimsy facade that has been repeatedly presented to us as the better way to be and live.

19th January

Happy Biscuit Day!

This is a cat called Biscuit, featured on a cat calendar today. I haven't met Biscuit, just seen photos and videos. Biscuit is very cute.

I am grateful because last August I met Biscuit's owner and we're now friends. And the same weekend I met others who are now friends.

And in that weekend, pretty much exactly 3600 hours ago, I began to dance barefoot in a big thunderstorm with one of those people and what has developed out of that is wonderful and I could not be more grateful for it or for her or for us.

20th January

Today has been hard. It's included panic attacks, publicly bursting into tears when I went to buy food, and being told I am not eligible to be referred for the help the specialist says I need because I don't have enough issues.
 
Moan over. Grateful for these two news friends I found this morning in a charity shop that opened nearby. You can never have too many friends.

21st January

The only photos I've taken today were of my over sized sock collection with an over emphasis on black. It's part of an ongoing clear out process.

Grateful to have been with a friend tonight.
Grateful to have booked tickets to go back to Manchester even though it's thirty days away and right now that feels like an eternity.
Grateful that the majority of moments today have not contained a panic attack or tears.
Grateful for the safety of this home, this room, and this bed.
Grateful that the soon-to-be-shrunk sock collection is over sized rather than having little or nothing to wear on my feet.

And grateful that I've been able to blog my gratitude pictures and comments and that they helped inspire someone else going through a rough patch to write her own blog post today about some things for which she is grateful.

22nd January

Grateful for this. I began a course today. From a starting point of total ignorance I have pretty big hopes of what could develop from what I learn.

Hey Clare, you're in the midst of mental health crud and struggle to get through each day. So why not add to the fun: come up with ideas and start a company or social enterprise?

It's scary though and totally not what I could have expected to be a possibility a year ago. It is hard to believe that this could become reality. It will often be challenging but it IS possible.

23rd January

Grateful for this:

For the unicorns, rainbows and magic.

For friendliness and smiles in the street.

For bringing galloping to Northumberland Street.

For bringing some love to Monument to improve the atmosphere once the (swear word deleted) masked and angry xenophobic and racist speakers of hate had left.

Grateful that there are crazy, light filled people who will do things like this. And that today I had both the spoons and the opportunity to be one of those crazy, light filled people.  Grateful to have met others and happy to share this world with them.

Activities such as these are really hard for me - autism isn't easy! - and I am having to shut myself away right now in recovery for my brain but it was great to be there and do this. A friend said that when you're short of spoons you have to be very wise in your choices of what to do and what not to do. This was something I'd gladly spend my spoons on again.