Written @ 8:59 a.m. on 2007-04-11
Grateful Hil
Ok. This shit is addicting. Give. Me. More. Diaryland!
Lately I have been feeling so tremendously grateful for my life. I am a person who has truly had everything taken away from me at one point. Extremely oversimplified,some things happened with my divorce, and I lost my home, my relationship, my job, my children, everything I owned, and of course, after all of that, my health. That major life-tornado hit about three years ago, and slowly, I have come out from under the rubble and rebuilt myself.
I ended up moving to a city in pennsylvania to share custody with my ex. I didn't know anyone here, and it's not really a fun city. It's one of those the industrial revolution ate and then excreted out the other end. I took the first apartment I could find in my daughter's school district, and it was REALLY bad. In the beginning we were REALLY broke. The apartment had one bedroom, which I set up for the girls, and I slept on a futon in the livingroom. That was all great, until the futon broke. Then I slept on the floor, which was actually about 100 times more comfortable, but kind of embarrassing.
My neighbors were mean, and my dog had a nervous breakdown there, and I had to find him another family. The livingroom had no windows. None. The shower was only boiling hot or off, and there was no tap for the tub. The landlord actually looked me in the face and told me that it normally takes a gas oven three minutes to ignite.
The place looked nice from the outside, though, and was situated in a lovely neighborhood in a good school district. I grew a nice garden in my scrubby patch of grass behind the house. I reminded myself how much money I was saving by living there, and I looked for a new place.
Recently I moved into a new place and I love it so much that coming home is like a vacation. It is an apartment that sits on top of my favorite pizza place. The landlord gutted the place and lovingly created a cozy little secret hideaway. From the street you cannot tell anything is here, but inside is a hidden oasis. It has a brand new kitchen and a, gasp, laundry room. All of the wall are pale yellow with white moldings, and with windows all over the place, it is impossible to be depressed here.
There is a giant sunroom with windows on three sides, and this I have turned into my greenhouse and dining area. It's going to be an amazing indoor garden, but right now its just sprouts in flats. It is so cool when it is snowing to stand there in my sunroom, windows all around, up above the street, feeling as if you are in the middle of the storm.
The first time I came to see the apartment, I felt this good vibe here, and I have felt it ever since. It's MY place, pulled together by ME, through hard work and sacrifice. I wake up in the morning and think,"I am grateful for a bed. I am grateful for a bedroom. I am grateful for sunny windows. I am grateful to have my children with me and to feel healthy and well enough to play with them, yell at them, and kiss them a thousand times in this nice, safe, warm, happy apartment."
I'm not just saying that. Cheezy as it sounds, really I do! I'm not recommending going through all of these traumatic experiences to anyone, but I have found it to be true, what they say about not fully appreciating anything until you have done without it.
I thought I was slipping out of my old spiritual practices but perhaps I have just simplified it by going through my day thinking,"Thankyou. Thankyou. Thankyou I lived through."