Why I’m Thankful

It was a paleo Thanksgiving at my house this year...
It was a paleo Thanksgiving at my house this year…

With Thanksgiving this week, as I returned home and sat around the table with my family, despite flaring recently, I couldn’t help but be thankful for the progress I’ve made over the last year-and-a-half that allowed me to be at that table—and for the family surrounding me, who helped me get there.

As awful as the latest flare was, now that I’ve switched my antibiotic to Azithromycin and am doing better, I’m all the more grateful for everything I have. It may sound like a cliché, but it’s true that there’s nothing like losing something to make you understand its value…

A year-and-a-half ago, I lost myself to this terrible disease. Though I wasn’t dead, emotionally and mentally, I was gone. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t eat. I often couldn’t speak cohesively. I was constantly having involuntary movements. Most of all, I lost everything about my personality that made me myself—my joy and the spark of life in my eyes; I turned suicidal.

Because I once lost everything, I try not to take things for granted anymore. These days, when I decide to walk to class, there’s a smile on my face because I appreciate that my legs and brain now work together. When I touch a doorknob without hesitating, I’m thrilled to no longer be tormented by OCD about what germs I may be picking up.

When I can carry out a conversation without forgetting words or saying the wrong ones, I consider it a privilege. When I sit still in class without thinking about holding in tics or disguising my chorea movements, I’m grateful. When I packed my suitcase all by myself this week, I felt accomplished, because my executive function problems once made this impossible.

Living with the awareness that I lost, but have now regained, everything I now have adds a new layer of joy to my life that I never could’ve experienced otherwise. While there’s still plenty of emotional baggage as a result of my ordeal, I try to see the ability to be more thankful for life as more than a silver lining.

Although I continue to struggle in a lot of ways and have flares, I strive to be thankful for everything I do have. Embracing gratitude, no matter what time of year it is, is important because it helps you focus on the good things, even if there are a lot of bad things in your life. I see it as a way to overcome, because when you remember what you have and all that you can do rather than thinking of what you don’t have and can’t do, you can make better use of the abilities and opportunities you’re given.

So this coming week, as I head back to school into the home stretch of the semester, I’m going to do my best to be thankful that I’m well enough to be in college, struggling to get enough sleep, finish my projects, pass my exams, and make it until the end.

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