If you are going through hell, keep going

Sometimes when I think I'm going through something rough, I think about some of the awful things that other people have endured, and that are much, much worse.

People who have been enslaved, or raped, or tortured. People who deal with chronic or terminal illness and then die way too early. People in California who have lost their homes and possessions or, God forbid, family members to raging fires.

I don't have to deal with anything like that.

My children are healthy. I am healthy. I have a good job and live in a nice house and wear nice clothes. I live in a beautiful place and I am able to take advantage of what it offers. I have the means and ability to travel. I having a loving family and wonderful friends.

I know how fortunate I am.

It's not a comparative analysis, though. People get to feel bad about things even if other people are dealing with things that are worse.

Anyway.

I was thinking about Thanksgiving coming up next week. As we always do, the family will gather at my parents' house. My mom and I will walk Buster together. We will cook together.  My dad will take the kids to the Air & Space Museum, or to play at Clemyjontri Park. On Wednesday night, we will go to Tony Cheng's for dinner and then to the hockey game. On Thursday morning we will participate in the SOME Trot for Hunger and then have breakfast at the Metro 29 diner. On Friday we will have our open house and eat leftover pie with our friends. Lisa and I will plan our trip to India next summer.

(Did I tell you I'm going to India with Lisa next summer? I'm going to India with Lisa next summer. Soooo excited.)

I love our Thanksgiving traditions.

Like most people, when we sit down at Thanksgiving dinner we go around the table and everyone says what they're thankful for. Or if you're going to be grammatically correct, we identify the things for which we are thankful.

Family is always up there. Health. Love. Prosperity.

Those are the evergreens of Thanksgiving thankfulness.

This year I am thankful for all those things, as I always am. But I am also thankful for my own strength and resourcefulness. I am thankful for my ability to endure and persevere.

As I've alluded to, my son has had a really hard, traumatic six months or so. For the last two months and change, he has lived only with me. I have found and arranged for services that could help him. I have worked through adjustments in health care needs. I have worked with the school to develop strategies that would help him.

I have done everything and endured everything and arranged everything and paid for everything. I have had in that time maybe two or three nights to myself, when the kids had sleepovers.

It has been so, so hard. It has been so, so exhausting.

Emotionally, I am tapped out. I have gone through periods of intense anxiety, to the point that I had to increase my medication dosage and find others to reduce the feeling that my heart was going to pound right out of my chest.  I have cried a lot.  Many nights I have cried myself to sleep. But in the morning, I still got up and exercised and worked and did what I needed to do.

I have felt worthless and overwhelmed and incompetent and like I would never see any light at the end of the tunnel.

But now I can see it. Because of my efforts - because I loved, pushed, encouraged, comforted, raged when appropriate, held my tongue when I needed to, forced everyone to face the problem and deal with it - the light is there.

I can rest easier knowing that my son isn't in crisis. We can work toward a more normalized schedule. I can try to have some semblance of a personal life again. I can have days when I'm not responsible for taking care of anyone but myself.

So I'm thankful that I was able to do that.  And thankful that I did it.