I have lost my eyesight like I said I would, but I still know

 This weekend I lit the little moss/jar lanterns I made for my mom and sat outside on my parents deck and thought about all this month and the lessons of my gratitude experiment. Being thankful for those little things like life, light and warmth on a cold night.

This has been a good exercise, even if it's been especially vivid, at times. Feeling anything is a good change, though.  Last winter, when I was so dissolved, I floated around in an emotionless fog, got lost wiping down counters. I'm different now in a lot of ways.

Spacing out is a thing I just did, though, leaning in the doorway of my dining room and looking at my floors and surfaces. Not loss or grief,  but just thinking and looking at my materials. The great tally of the things that are important or not, the tightropes of expectation I'm always trying not to hang on. The rain pounding against the house.

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Friday: I appreciate my past, which has felt at times like my constant, grim companion this month. The things I left behind and the things that I lost. Sometimes it feels like this fragile egg I can't open without shattering. I've tried to learn from it, to put everything into scale. I know it's made me harder, sharper, brighter.

Saturday: I'm thankful for my health. This season there have been almost constant reminders about how fragile the human body can be, and how easily things can feel tipped over into something life-changing and irreversible. I've bitched endlessly about my calf injury this fall, but at the same time, I've realized how blessed I am to be able to be as active as I want, to jump fences and throw myself over creeks without even thinking. I don't look when I jump. It doesn't consume me. Even when I'm anxious and wild, I can feel this steady reliable persistence to my body. I feel it working. This little warm animal of myself that likes good, healthy, things, and behaves, responds, beats, wants.When I tilt my head back, now, my hair is long enough to nearly brush the top of my ass.

Sunday: Thankful for my fine tribe, the loved ones who make up such a strong support during these dark and wonderful months.