Q&A: Being grateful

Question number three for the Q&A segment is: “What are you most grateful for?”

This is a hard one too, in that there are so many potential answers for it.  I love being grateful.  Maybe that sounds strange, but feeling grateful for something is seriously one of my favourite feelings; it’s like being completely full and content, and it makes me feel much more connected with and attached to the person or thing I’m grateful for.  As a result of this love, I’m grateful for a lot of things, even if nobody realizes I am, since I’m fairly horrible at verbally expressing my feelings.  So…

I’m grateful for my friends and family, even at their worst, for my ‘new’ job, for my new apartment, for an interaction I had last week, for the relationships I’ve had and what they’ve meant to me, and for so many more little things than I could possibly ever explain.  I have my low days, sure, but I appreciate far more than people think, and give me two seconds to think about it and I’ll love everything.  I’m honestly amazed by the world and by people (however horrible they may be sometimes and however much they may disappoint me when they love things like the books I’m reading for this blog), and I’m so grateful for being able to experience those things.  I’m grateful for the travel I’ve done, for the travel that I’m sure is to come, and I’m really, ridiculously fucking grateful for my best friend, Mike, who has been the reason for so many more things in my life than he knows, because without him I’d be in a much worse place in my life than I am now.

I’m also grateful for the relationship I have with my son’s father, since we’re not a couple and do not live together, yet we’re friendly with one another, and we respect each other.  To me, that means a lot, and it makes our parenting much, much better.  And on that subject comes my answer to this question: The thing I’m most grateful for is, quite simply, my son.

I know, what a shock, eh?  Yes, that seems an obvious answer, and yes, every mother should probably say it.  But hear me out here; it’s not quite as simple as that.  See, I never wanted a child.  In fact, I absolutely, vehemently did not want a child, and could not fathom bringing a child into this world, with all its corruption and depression and hostility and etc.  I had decided at a young age that I would never bring a child into this world, and that if I ever ended up pregnant, I would definitely have an abortion.  So when I became pregnant, that is exactly what I set on course to do.

Obviously, you know how it turned out, but it turned out that way against all odds, though I won’t get into the details of that.  Suffice it to say that after lots of adversity, my son was born, there was some more adversity when he was an infant (which made me very grateful for my stepfather, I should mention), and in that time, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep him.  I thought very heavily of adoption.  But then somehow, all things started to come together, and he became the most amazing, wonderful little person.  That’s not just bias or a new way that I viewed him, he has actually developed into the most perfect, hilarious little child, and he’s saved my life more than once.

So there it is.  I’m grateful for him, for the fact that he always slept through the night and never really got sick (once in 3.5 years), for the fact that he’s a happy, charming boy who generally listens well and loves me to death, for his personality…for just everything he is.  I’m so grateful that he is the person he is, and that he’s mine, and that I’ll get to be the one that sees him grow up.  I’m grateful that he’s been a relatively easy child, and that everyone loves him, and that I know he makes the world a better place just by being in it.  I’m grateful that he’s my one greatest hope for this world and all its problems.  More than anything, I’m grateful that he picked me, and for that, I will always be there for him.

I’ll leave it there; that’s enough sap for today.

Check out Mike’s answer at http://emptystress.wordpress.com, and please feel free to post your own in the comments!

(Next question: “What was the warmest welcome you ever received?”)