Look, I’m still grumpy and still not feeling very grateful this week… but we all know the best way to fight feeling ungrateful is to find our gratitude, so I’m going to sit here and find it. I will pull out some gratitude if it’s the only thing I actually do today. Please join me for another Faceless Friday, where we list out what has rocked our faces off this past week… even if we don’t want to. Damnit.

Let’s do the short list, or the round up list first to get our heads right. Here we list the things that may seem mundane or we can’t find all the words to share our gratitude for. Here we go:

Coffee (always and forever, amen), audiobooks, music, electric blankets and heating pads, battery operated heated socks (YES it’s a thing and as someone that has permanent nerve damage and can’t feel their feet, like ever, it’s a fucking miracle invention), dog food and the money to secure the good stuff (it had been awhile the Beasts were “obviously” withering away having been fed rice, eggs and whatever else I could throw together for them, my kiddo miraculously not getting whatever illness I have until this morning so he could go to school all week (since they want to be all up on my nuts about his whereabouts all the time), running water, running water that isn’t rusty!, my home being mostly clean, only having $9 until next week but somehow managing to have some food and gas in the borrowed vehicle until then so I’m not puking with anxiety over it, I had enough money this year to get a few Christmas gifts for Mister Man and I am picking up some toys for tots in a bit so it’s all going to work out, It’s all going to work out (He won’t care if Santa ran out of wrapping paper, the kid is pretty understanding that way).

Okay, let’s delve deeper into that.

Mister Man. My son.  His heart was so shattered last week because his counselor, the only man in his life he actually HAS and can count on had to leave for an emergency and couldn’t see him. SHATTERED. They ended up BOTH crying in the parking lot over it.  IF my kiddo didn’t have so much anxiety and abandonment issues over his deadbeat father it would roll off like “oh he has stuff he has to take care of” but every time someone cancels on him he takes it so guttural, so personal and it hurts. It hurts so damn much. He cried at such a desperate, feral level of “why doesn’t anyone want to see me, love me, spend time with me” that we all just… cried. And then it happened again when his friend couldn’t come over over the weekend. My boy cried and wept to the animals, thanking them for loving him and how thankful he is that Mommy and Nico and Josie and Moonshadow (even though she is mean) still love him and want to see him every day. It is so hard and so raw raising someone that you see all of your own issues reflected in, where they began. The abandonment, the anxiety of never being enough, of wanting to be more anything so someone will be nice to you. I have read all of the books, he has been in counseling for three years already, and yet, we cry and we talk about how people’s actions don’t reflect who WE are, they reflect who THEY are.  Something I didn’t learn until I was well into my thirties.  My beautiful, thoughtful boy, who buys gifts at school for friends that call him cuss words and run away from him. How I want to shelter him and explain that people don’t know the depths of him or the damage they do, and that they, they just don’t understand.  For now, for now I am grateful he still counts me as his safe place.  That he still believes with all of his heart I won’t let him down. I fear and loathe the day he learns I am human. My beautiful miracle boy.

That’s all I can do for today.

Thank you for being here. I will work on finding more gratitude for next week.