A new perspective

"That was a memorable day for me, for it made great changes in me, but it is the same way with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns and flowers, that never would have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day." -Charles Dickens Great Expectations

For the first time in two and a half years things are starting to make sense. This person that I have been for the past few years is slowly being taken over by the real Beth. I don't know plan on it all happening at once, or even quickly for that matter, but the beginnings of it are giving me hope like I haven't felt in a very long time. It's so odd to think back and know what happened that slowly brought me to this point, and to feel like everything since then hasn't been real. I cling to the past, I cling to "before I got sick" and I think I almost believe that when I got sick everything changed, BECAUSE I was sick. I didn't die that day in the hospital like they thought I was going to, but it's almost like I did just not physically. Wow, I know, how deep. For the first time in years I feel like my life is really something and I am feeling real feelings, things that were so common and so much a part of my everyday life that I took them for granted, until they were gone. I still have large parts of that bitter/confused/depressed girl that shine through but the friendly/loving/caring/hopeful girl that I think I once was is starting to fight and win. I think I want it more now. I learned a special lesson from someone I have never met, but who has really touched me just because of her good attitude in a time that she has every right to have a bad attitude. She only has 6 months to live, and instead of giving up now she is living her life, she is getting married and she is going to do as much as she can with her life, because she is still alive, and she can. I on the other hand was given a second chance and I have just taken it for granted everyday. I have been overwhelmed, probably by the things I haven't allowed myself to feel for the past few years. I will have a passing thought of someone close to me and it turns into like a "montage" of all the things they have done for me and then I realize how that helped me get to this point, and then I cry. It has happened often lately. Or I remember a situation, that, at the time just seemed convenient but now I realize was a blessing, and not just lucky, it was meant to happen that way. I am thinking of a day that I went to BYU to pick up my roommate with a friend. My friend went inside to do something and coming back she ran into my roommate. Instead of coming right back out to hang out with me in the car like I begged her to she stayed with my roommate waiting in line to buy tickets for a show. At the time I was frustrated because I was alone in a car just waiting. My phone rang and it was a friend who I hadn't been as close with but who meant and still means a lot to me and that friend and I had a conversation that I desperately needed to have. That friend was the first person I told about how depressed I was, before I even realized that I was, and that was while sitting in the BYU Wilk parking lot. Had my friend come back instead of waiting inside I wouldn't have had the same conversation as I did and this long process of recovering probably would have been even longer. I realized YESTERDAY that it wasn't really just luck that my friend didn't come back out. I needed to have that conversation and so it was made possible. This is one of many things that have been taking over my thoughts these days and I just hope I can keep this feeling of gratitude, I wish I could express to the people that have helped me and touched me how much they have, but I feel incapable, and I probably am...

"Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep." -Felix Frankfurter

That about sums it up...