Gratitude; good. Attitude; bad.

(A Thanksgiving note to folks like me, for whom it does not come naturally)

When I first got sober, I remember turning around and just walking out of recovery meetings if the topic was “gratitude”. Spending an hour listening to people prattle on about great things in their lives made me want to chew my own hands off.

At the time, admitting I was grateful for anything felt like an act of treason against the fact that I felt wounded by everything.

Eventually, as I came to, as I got my feet under me and became ever so slightly more functional, I kept to the same script. Admitting progress felt like a betrayal of how far I still had to go. Like, sure I didn’t have to visit the “free clinic” anymore, but all I could think about was how I still didn’t have a job. Yes, I no longer woke up in unfamiliar locations, but I didn’t bother being grateful for that because I still had a pile of unopened collection notices.

One day my sponsor caught on, and in what felt like an act of aggression against me, asked if maybe I was afraid to be happier.

She wasn’t wrong.

But I think more accurately I was afraid, not of being happier, but of saying I was happier. Because to admit that something in my life was good, was to taunt the universe into taking it away. I’d rather live in the grey mush of meh, than risk feeling the loss. It’s such a melancholic calculous, but I was committed to it.

As I have written about many times before, I have not yet received a personality transplant. I still struggle with impatience, snark, and just the tiniest bit of misanthropy. Let’s just say that I am still not someone who would have a Hobby Lobby throw pillow with “Gratitude” scrawled on it in my home.

But I can say this: I am ever so grateful. Truly. That is to say, I am less afraid to say thanks. To whisper it to God. And say it to my lover. And feel it in my entire being. BUT…not because it comes naturally. It still does not.

I just. . . practiced, I guess. I practiced getting over my first response to everything. I practiced noticing when I was viewing everything that happened in my life through the lens of what I was or was not getting from it (good or bad). I practiced noticing small things. And even though I still struggle with self-centeredness, I try to notice and comment on the contribution and gifts of others.

AND I still struggle sometimes. Like, this is super embarrassing to admit, but there was this moment a year and a half ago when I checked my phone, and saw another writer’s post about being invited to do something I had really wanted to do, and reader, for a moment I was like, why wasn’t I asked?!? And I know that is a very human response, but here’s the kicker: at the moment I had the whole “why not me?” reaction, I was on a beautiful ship at the bottom of the world having spent several breathtaking hours that day . . . on the continent of Antarctica. Something few humans ever get to do. I mean…good lord. Thankfully, it lasted just a moment and then I literally laughed at myself. Out loud.

My point is this: Gratitude has a difficult time co-existing with entitlement.

Every time I think about what I do not have that I think I deserve I miss every amazing and beautiful thing in my life that I get to have even though I do not probably “deserve” it.

(I am reminded of how Arthur Brooks claims there is an equation for contentment: Take what you HAVE. And divide it by what you WANT.)

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I’m not one to take much stock in “cheer up!” messages from people who are more naturally cheerful than I am, or “be grateful!” messages from people who are more naturally grateful than I am. So if you are someone (like me) whose first reaction to everything isn’t the very best most mature thing in the world, I invite you to join me in praying to be moved as quickly as possible to genuine gratitude and to not have that feel like a betrayal of the part of us that still has unmet needs.

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Here’s my own, off the top of my head, incomplete list of thinks fro which I am grateful today:

That I am still sober, my oven is still working, my dog still likes me. For everything Sacred Harp singing has brought to my life. That my adult children don’t mind hanging out with me. For the church I belong to inside the women’s prison and the astonishing faith of its members. For having half-and-half in the fridge when I thought we were out. That I get to have this little corner of the internet for my writing, and for folks like you who support me in that. For the remission of my sister’s breast cancer. That I get to be alive at the same time as Dolly Parton. That there are a couple people on this Earth who know me completely and still love me completely and the absolute mystery and grace of that.

Gertrude Stein is thankful for sweater weather.

I’d love to hear your incomplete list, or even just one thing that comes to mind.

And may Leslie Jones show up for us all.

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