Speed Post: Gratitude

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Normally it takes me about 2 hours to get a blog fully posted (I'm a perfectionist, what can I tell you?)  I have 23 min....GO!

My family (awesome-ness) has brunch every saturday and sunday morning (frieking awesome-ness).  I don't always get to go and savor the delectible breakfast treats I remember from my grade school years at home, but this last week I did and for some reason had a Total Meltdown.  Really.  Yelling and throwing things tantrum-like meltdown.

I can't really explain it, it was like this huge wave of emotion crashed over me for about an hour and then went away pretty much as quickly as it came.  I'd like to blame my ginormous over-reaction on the stress in my life, and hormones (of course), and hope that my family will just let that one slide under the rug.  Still, that wasn't entirely it. 

I think I've been bottling up a lot of little hurts--little times when my family did or said something slightly insensitive--and they all came out in a gush saturday.  I had ignored the slight hurts at the time because if you make something big out of a little thing you often do a great deal more hurt to the person who only minimally hurt you.  No one is perfect, and we're all trying.  I know my family loves me, so I put my hurt feelings away.

What I did wrong was not let them go.  Sure, it is appropriate to swallow things sometimes, but if you let them stay there they only fester.  I didn't realize it until saturday, but I was remembering all of those little things every time there was a new little thing.  I would take them all out and look at them, decide it wasn't worth the hurt talking about it would cause and put them all back.  I guess on saturday the jagged, festering, pile was just too putrid to put back.  I had let it become a "thing".

My mom, my sister, and I had a long talk about it.  They were so patient with me, as they always are.  They helped resolve a lot of my issues and balance my perspective on what reality really looks like.  Since then, I've really been noticing and remembering all the little (and big) good things that my family does for me.  I have been amazed.  I really and truly love each person in my family (yes! that's you too step-family!) because they are great people.  And they love me too.  They laugh with me, and come to my shows, and brag about my silly accomplishments to their co-workers.  They invite me to girly-parties and game-nights and movies and dinners.  They help me move and help me get over ex-boyfriends, help me find a new style or a pair of jeans that actually fit.  They set me up on dates (as painful as blind dates are, I still appreciate the sentiment, family :) and tell me that I'm too uniquely wonderful for most of they guys out there (and actually mean it).  They talk to me about my problems, and tell me when I'm being an idiot, and put up with my odd way of saying the exact wrong thing all the time.

Today I woke up with an enormous sense of gratitude.  Before I had kind of been looking for bad things to match up with the ones I already had stored away.  The past few days, I've been remembering all the good things, and it's amazing how many of them I've found.  It's too bad that the little nice things people do for you don't get stored away in your memory as easily as the bad things, but they do have a way of growing on you if you take the time to notice them. 

It's scary to believe someone loves you.  It's a lot easier to believe that you are disliked.  It feels safer, but in the long run, is it really?  If you trust that someone loves you, a lot of mis-communication is avoided, and a lot of worry and time are saved.  It's easier to forgive people and salvage relationships that might be in jeopardy when you operate under the assumption that you are loved.  I've been worrying so much in my life whether or not my friend/family relationships are strong enough that I haven't been taking the time to be happy in them.  Letting myself be happy in them. 

I think I know now why they say that to truly love someone, you can't expect anything back.  I think that maybe we get back much more than we ever realize, because it's harder to see (and remember) all the things the other person does for you.  We keep the love alive by always giving (back).

Thanks family.  I love you.

 

 

I only wish I had pictures of everyone! sorry!