Thanksgiving Day 2018
What were my options? Beatings and soul crushing verbiage in one household, silence and emotional and physical abandonment in the other, or will it be the streets. With option number two I at least had the possibility of more contact with my family and friends. So I opted for that one. Thus, I continued on my journey of survival.
I am thankful today for surviving. I survived the unpredictable and somewhat misplaced beatings. I survived the neverending non-praise, I survived the silent drunkard, making sure to come home when he was surely passed out. I survived the promises, that were mostly kept, but provided at so late a time that mourning of the loss had already occurred. I survived the cruelty of returned gifts because of a slight childhood mishap. I survived and that is what I am mostly grateful for because if you read “A Gladiator’s Journey” survival was not a forgone conclusion. Don’t get me wrong, I never wanted to do self-harm, but I was never afraid of being harmed. Having survived the anvil of the blacksmith, I felt there was nothing out there that could do any worse harm. Thank God. Because if I didn’t survive, I would have missed out on a lifetime of things including the upcoming birth of my grandchild. I have people close to me that joke about my age and becoming a grandfather, but it is not funny to me. You see, I never had a real thought that I would make it this far. Through my recovery process, I now want to live to be 100 years old. To that end, I am beginning to do those things that I need to in order to improve my chances of getting there. Improvement of my diet, exercise, stress levels, but more importantly evaluating those that are in my life that are not “ride or die.” Those people that would just as soon tear me down at every opportunity rather than lift me up. I realize that I cannot control their behavior, but I have the choice to allow them in my life or not. Today, I am thankful that I am choosing me instead of being in the presence of those that would rather tear me down. Today, Thanksgiving day 2018, I am alone on a beach, listening and watching the soothing crashing waves. This is much more pleasing to me. There are those of course that I miss today and in the future I will have to decide how I better include them in my life especially on days like today, I hope those people know who they are and forgive me for today, just know this is a temporary blip in our connectedness and it will be stronger in the future.
Just a Gladiators musing on this thankful day!