Dispensation for Ungratefulness

Gratitude is a heavy burden. "At least it's not" is often an insult or a curse more than a comfort. I spent years sick, dragging a body that took more strength to lift than its weight indicated, hearing "at least it's not cancer."

The best thing about my cancer was that after my diagnosis, no one told me at least it wasn't cancer. Some of the refrain of "at least it's not cancer" before then had been comments about my cancer symptoms, just not-yet-diagnosed. 

My cancer diagnosis itself did nothing for my fatigue or my pain, but I did cause a wash of relief: I was finally allowed to feel bad. I didn't have to be grateful to have cancer. Cancer was the big bad wolf of illnesses, the meanest kid on the block, and something tangibly, demonstrably, and most of all scannably wrong with my body. I finally had a dispensation for ungratefulness.

For years on years, I had reached for gratitude in my hardest moments. I wielded gratitude like a knife to cut out my pain, my fear, and my opportunities to be honest with myself. I believed the only acceptable version of myself was only grateful in the face of tragedy and travesty. When people I loved died, I spent my days talking about how glad I was to have known them - only to shock myself with incoherent sobs at night, as my grief took its course with or without my permission.

In the years since, I have found that classic gratitude is often too pushy and saccharine. Maybe cancer changed my appreciation taste buds. Sure, I could tell you I'm grateful for my home and my spouse and my cats. And it's not at all that I'm not grateful for those things - it's that the weight of ponying up a more than cursory "I'm grateful for" is more than I can bear.

The gratitude you get at the spiritual big box store doesn't have room for the nuance I need to expand my diaphragm and take the deep breaths that keep me centered. I am grateful for my home, and I struggle with the fruit flies I can't seem to banish. I am grateful for my spouse, and I wonder at how you have to break in a marriage more than any other thing on earth; how marriages simply don't fit right until after life has thrown rotten tomatoes at you together for half a decade. I am grateful for my cats, and one of them keeps having seizures that are hard to manage even with the medication she resents her owners for giving her. It's not that I don't appreciate these things. But my world and its artifacts have dimension and character; they reflect the light in my eyes differently at different angles. I am tired of ironing flat the edges of all that brings me delight with the blunt instrument of gratitude.

Thanksgiving is rounding the corner. Many of us will gather around a big table and feel we have to publicly declare how glad we are about things we don't feel that flatly about. Our gratitude platitudes will shave off the hours and years of labor and heartache we put in to get the things we're extolling. My successes have yet to come without toil; even Thanksgiving Dinner is a product of so much toil, planning, and infrastructure. And the holiday itself has its origins in heartache, betrayal, and cruelty.

I have abandoned the cudgel of gratitude. I use softer, gentler tools now; tools that let me see the hope on the horizon without pretending there is no pain haunting my body, my neighborhood, and my world. I have opened my windows to let grief in, and her ghastly form joins me in sipping a cup of hot water at midnight. I am glad not to be alone.

Glimmers

Instead of grateful, I try to be attentive. In the moments where things lay just right - the tablecloth was just put out, my cat accepts a treat from my hand, my teeth feel clean after brushing, sunshine touches my face - I notice it. For the next two seconds, for the time it takes me to breathe in and out one time, I pay attention to what's happening. I notice how it's good, warm, hopeful, or peaceful.

And then I move on. I let the good things slip through my hands after I just notice them for a moment. I don't staple them to my walls anymore. The sunshine has always come back to greet me again another day. My toothbrush waits for my next visit. I do not ask either of them to solve my depression. They never could have, before, and now that I'm not asking, their beauty is clearer to me.

Neutrality

Instead of grateful, I try to be honest. It's too harsh for me to try to mentally push a situation from "horrible" to "wonderful." I'm not grateful for the job that fired me, not really. I'm not grateful for my apartment that had a roach infestation so bad there were bugs in my morning coffee, not really. I'm not grateful for the cancer, not really.

Ungratefulness lets me see these things as the hardships they were. I don't have to try to mold them, in my present or my past, into sanctuaries. They don't fit the mold anyway.

Despite my lack of gratitude, I don't let these wounds fester either. It's just that positivity is too far a bridge for me to cross while being kind to my body and mind with these painful realities. In moments where my mind is in the past, I name that it was all in the middle somewhere. It didn't have to be a horrible nightmare for it to hurt me. I didn't have to be a perfect or horrible person to have the experiences I did. I tell myself, "I did my best with what I had."

Hope

Instead of grateful, I try to be thoughtful about the good things that await me. I make sure to keep something I'm looking forward to on the calendar all the time, so I can pull it up and remember my future has good things. Even when these celebrations are microscopic, I savor them in advance. We can get takeout in two weeks. A new movie will be added to a streaming service I have. My friend will call on Thursday.

When this fails, I plan pretend vacations. The world is out there, and it has islands, mountains, oceans, and cities I can't imagine. I find fancy hotels in other countries online and look through the pictures of the presidential suite. Sometimes, I book flights to make it feel real, knowing I will cancel them the next day. Even if I cannot reach it, the world's beauty cannot escape my notice.

Dispensation for Ungratefulness

Gratitude is too heavy to carry; it's shaped too much like a bludgeon. It demands uniformity of thought I can't muster. But choosing ungratefulness is not the same as being dour and hopeless.  I am not grateful this November. Actually, like every November I recall, I am tired, in pain, and depressed. But I am aware of goodness, and I am honest about my world, and I let hope lift me like a balloon tied on my arm.

It's gentle, and it's enough for me to get by.