Gratefulness

Life goes on, right? My hus­band lost his job yes­ter­day. There’s a lot of stuff that I need to rethink, since my classes at UAB are no longer going to be free. I was already strug­gling with pri­or­i­tiz­ing prop­erly any­way, and every­thing got ever so much more com­pli­cated that it already was. I assume I’ll end up back at work at least part time. I’m not giv­ing up on the engi­neer­ing that eas­ily, though. It just will be a dif­fer­ent plan than I orig­i­nally thought.

When Chris called me to pick him up, I told a few peo­ple, made a phone call to a friend who lis­tened to me and I thanked pro­fusely, then I made a quicky post to var­i­ous social net­works. People’s con­nec­tions will be our best ticket to get­ting leads and straight­en­ing things out. What I didn’t expect was that so many peo­ple I knew had already posted images of their arms for me, refer­ring to me as their impe­tus. I’d already been rewarded for allow­ing myself to show pieces of me I never usu­ally would let be out there. Then, in short order after I announced Chris’ job loss, peo­ple showed them­selves ready to help in what­ever capac­ity they could.

Apollo imme­di­ately sent me the Moun­tain Goats’ This Year video. I hadn’t heard that song in ages, but it so appro­pri­ately expresses my exact men­tal state. This year isn’t going to beat me, damn it.

The day pro­gressed, and though my head ached, there were more phone calls, more sup­port, and even friends who came over and hugged me and made me laugh and wouldn’t let me stay down.

And it con­tin­ues on, even today. One of the peo­ple I’ve known the longest, since preschool, sent me a mes­sage ask­ing what was wrong? I briefly told him about the state of things as they are right now. Tonight I logged in to write this post, and he’d sent me a pic­ture of his arm, with the word LOVE on it. His cap­tion read, “Sup­port­ing an old neme­sis.” (I was someone’s neme­sis! How cool is that?!)

I’m very glad that I’ve learned to begin to show a bit of vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Let­ting peo­ple into my emo­tional inner cir­cle is dif­fi­cult, but I’m so glad I’ve got­ten over that enough to let peo­ple in, or else how would they know I needed those lit­tle perks? Thank each and every one of you for all you’ve done. Karma will be knock­ing on your door, I promise.