I tried doing the whole 30 Days of Gratitude for November but I reached a point when it felt fraudulent. I am simply incapable of “faking it until I make it”. I have friends whom come from the 12-step genre that says one should slog through the motions until you get your movement back. I just can’t do it. If my trains has jumped the tracks, making an effort to push the box car that is completely derailed is a colossal act of futility. I am already exhausted. I am already off my tracks. Just making the motions or feigning an effort of correcting things is absurd. I’d rather just sit down and wait. Something will come. Somehow things will get replaced. It all gets put back on the tracks. It is as if a giant hand comes down and returns all the Matchbox cars to the black plastic tracks so racing can recommence. I only know that once I jump the tracks I am incapable of restoring things. I have to just wait. And so I waited.
I turtle. I withdraw. I hibernate. I crawl into the closet and I wait until it all blows over. I can’t foresee what makes it blow over. It’s unpredictable. It’s effervescent. It’s nebulous and defies reproduction. I can’t use the same “Get Out of Jail free” card more than once. When I was 15, it was running. I ran like Forrest Gump. I ran until the summer of my freshman year in college when my right knee blew up like a bush baby melon. Over the years, the “Get Out of Jail” card has been identifiable only in retrospect. Compulsively praying a Rosary every day for nearly a year worked once. Playing World of Warcraft was one turn. I am not sure yet as to what pried me lose this time but I am back on track. I can sense it. The fluidity, the effortlessness, the lack of scratchy friction.
And for this I am truly and awesomely grateful.