Being Grateful For the Many Blessings That I Have
Dancing Elephants Press Prompt 8 of 52
Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles gave me six options to respond to this amazing prompt and I think that I’ll go ahead and answer all six today.
The theme is gratitude. Here are 6 prompts. Interpret it in any way you want; use all or one . . . It is up to you!
1. 3 things I am grateful for in my life
2. What I love most about my home
3. This week, I am grateful for this (a special moment, an event)
4. A gadget I am grateful for
5. Something from the past that I’m grateful for is…
6. A gift that I’m most grateful for is…
Three things I’m grateful for
The three main things that I’m grateful for in my life right now are my shelter, my laptop, and my partner. The fact that I have a warm place to sleep and call home after everything I’ve been through in the last couple of years is a true blessing. I never take that fact for granted for a minute of any day.
My laptop has also been a blessing because it’s connected me to the outside world and has allowed me to write on such a great platform, Medium. I definitely don’t take the relationships that I’ve built here for granted.
My partner, obviously, has been with me through thick and thin for the greater part of nine years. I never thought that I’d find anyone who could put up with my ups and downs as much as he does. He’s a rock and a source of strength for me when I’m feeling down. He encourages me and builds me up every chance he gets.
The fire of our love has never wavered even as life comes at us in moments.
What I love most about my home
It’s not much but it keeps us warm. It can transport us from one place to another when we need to move. It has all of the essentials that we’d need in a normal-sized house. It is home because it is what my partner and I make it.
It is still a work in progress but I’m regretting this decision less and less every day that I get to spend with my partner alongside me living in this place. I haven’t really shared pictures of it yet because of the disorganization and the clutter still present in the space.
We can function, survive, and thrive within this space. That’s actually what I love most about my home. It is that and more and it is ours. It is a home of love.
This week, I’m grateful for getting better
I’ve been ill with COVID and potentially other ailments related to my breathing for almost two months now. I had a persistent cough that seemed like it didn’t want to go away.
I just kept treating it with medicine and continuing to take measures to extract whatever was trying to come out of my coughs. I’ve gotten plenty of mucus out in the last week or so and I’m starting to turn a corner.
I thought that I might need to address this with my primary care physician but now I see that it’s passing and I’m grateful that I was given time and had the time to recover and feel better. My health is very important given that it was already poor before I got sick.
I’m just grateful to be alive right now.
A gadget I’m grateful for
I’ve already said that I’m grateful for my laptop. It is amazing and allows me to write and connect to the greater outside world. Another gadget that I’m grateful for is my CPAP machine. It helps me breathe while I’m asleep.
Without it in normal circumstances, I would stop breathing over 70 times an hour. That’s what the doctor told me over three years ago when I first purchased it. Now that I’ve had it for so long, my episodes of not breathing are down to around 2–3 times an hour, much more normal than before.
I also sometimes use my CPAP machine when I’m awake and I feel like I need more air circulating through my body. It is very helpful to me and I feel like it’s saved my life.
Something from the past that I’m grateful for
I’m grateful for many things that have happened in my life over the years despite all of the adversity that I’ve been through. A thing from the past that I’m grateful for was the job that I landed before I couldn’t work anymore. I used to work at Verizon Wireless.
They treated me well. They were a great company in the sense of benefits and pay and such. I just wish that they were pro-union but that’s another story for another day. The experience and the lessons I learned from working there are to not take your health for granted. This job was when my health started declining.
Luckily, the leave I needed was available until I couldn’t work anymore. I’m grateful for being a leading associate for the company for so long before I was forced to retire young. It was definitely an experience in my life that I needed.
A gift that I’m most grateful for
I know it’ll sound cliché but I’m grateful for the gift of living another day. I’m still relatively young at 40 years old but my health as I had mentioned isn’t great and I deal with constant pain. The mortality I faced while battling COVID grounded me even further and made me feel grateful for all of the time that I was still breathing.
I have a life that I love right now. I may not have a lot but I have a partner who loves me, a place to sleep, and a way to express myself to the world. I couldn’t have had a bad life with all of those things present. I’m alive, I can eat, I can drink, I can laugh, I can cry.
I don’t need to be able to do anything else. As long as I stay alive and am able to continue to love and live, I’m grateful for that time. The gift of being able to sit here, think about my life, type about what I’m grateful for, and have more love than I know what to do with keeps me going and keeps me motivated.
Being able to connect with the amazing people that I do every day on a great writing platform makes my heart fill up with joy and I couldn’t be happier at this point.
Don’t take your life for granted. Every day we wake up and breathe and survive is a blessing. I had such a great time writing this response to such a beautiful prompt.
I hope that you get the chance to write in response to this as well.
