A Decision

The following was my journal entry from August 7, 2008, in the journal that I've written in since July 25, 2006:

I’ve reached a very important decision. As you know, I’ve been in an emotional funk, one sometimes intense, and recently anemic and draining, for two years now. In late August of 2006, my life was turned upside down, every ounce of happiness in it destroyed in an onrush of tears and loneliness that these pages sadly chronicled. The events that marked this terrible passage—my harsh rejection by my first roommates, the shock and respondent desperation to finding myself essentially friendless, the terrible isolation of Freshman Year—have all long passed, but their spell on me has extended for far greater a duration of time than that in which they transpired.

I was suicidal one year ago, as the diary entries for late July of 2007 attest. Yet in the twelve months since, I’ve allow myself to wallow in melancholy, permitted an examination of the world on entirely negative terms, and given my tormentors victory by letting their black meanness poison every aspect of my personality.

On the night of August 5th, I began thinking.

I have been squandering the gifts that I have been given and have allowed my life to become something meaningless and ugly.

No more.

I reflected on this on the 5th before bed, and then on the morning of the 6th I did so again. I made a pledge. I promised to stop sabotaging my own life. I saw that there is more in the world to be thankful for, so much more, at least in my case, than there is to mourn, and in indulging in an endless pity party I’d become my own victimizer.

I vowed that from now on I would see the positive and act to move forward. Here is a list of things I am thankful for:

*The love, forgiveness, and guidance of God
*My sister
*My parents and my drastically-improved relationship with them
*My family as a whole
*My grandmother Normal Family and her love
*Anne, a close companion as well as a mother
*The friends I do have, particularly my companions at work who enable me to actually laugh without faking
*The fact that I enjoy my job enough to turn down a higher-paying position elsewhere
*The Fall, and with it the upcoming college semester
*My renewed sense of purpose and direction
*My intellectual gifts, including my ability to write
*Singing
*Music
*The seasons
*The sun
*Flowers
*Books
*My blogging friends
*The fact that I am young, with much time ahead of me and much to experience
*My health
*My family members’ health (particularly Pie, who had a recent scare with what we thought might have been asthma but what turned out not to be)
*My body
*The fact that I can and do feel attractive
*The candidacy of Barack Obama and the potential for this country
*My own potential on different fronts
*The vast expanses in which I can travel, live, and see things
*Food in general
*My mother’s crab dip (which is so delicious)





I could go on (really, I could), but I think you get the idea. This will be my last entry in this journal. It’s seen enough, held enough, and its time has passed. I feel such peace to finally lay it down. Goodbye.