Thankful to Be Me

A few quick blinks in an attempt to get rid of the haze blurring my vision. A shake of my pigtail-donned head to get the soil off my hair. The first deep breath the moment my mom removed the dry mud from my nose and throat. And the very first conscious thought I can remember after that little fall down a muddy rabbit hole... Looking at my tiny grazed hands, all my sparkling eyes focused on was the dirty bundle of plush I had grabbed onto during the tumble.

'What a lovely teddy bear! He'll be my best friend now!' thought my smiling face.

Fast forward to 2020, I am 20 years of age - not a little 3-year-old anymore, and the situation is very similar in many ways. My pigtails may gave grown longer and got thicker but the basic storyline is the same: one happy girl in love with life despite the chaos around.

Of course I could have let the bad take over and just break down crying and panicking after the accident. But I didn't. All I seemed to be interested in was my new trophy in the form of a stuffed toy.

Likewise now, I could have let the avalanche of mishaps this dreadfully rough year of 2020 has 'blessed' me with crush me. But I didn't. The chaos is still raging, and all I am is a peace haven as I sit in my new, barely furnished flat and smile at the new pregnant belly I'm growing with utmost care. I'm sitting here thinking and I realise what I'm really most thankful for is simply myself. This whirlwind of a year has given me a way more conscious and grateful me - the best gift I could ever ask for.

It wasn't easy to get it, though, oh, no. After all, this year has indeed been pretty rough. But with hindsight, the challenging journey through the past eleven months was a beautifully transforming one at the same time. It did require a whole lot of mental and physical strain - there is no denying that - but it has carved me into the being I am now, and it is nothing short of a masterpiece I daresay. Even though each of the storms along the way was more violent than the other, I faced them all with unfaltering strength. Each log thrown at my feet sharpened my senses, strengthened my muscles and trained my agility. True, I may have been thrown off balance every now and then, but it didn't really matter in the long run because I was always strong enough to jump over the ever-growing obstacles and keep going with my chin high up and a playful spark in the eye.

And so, when Covid-19 arrived and settled itself properly, I stepped back for a day or two to gauge the new situation. And then, I simply threw myself straight into the whole lockdown thing ready to use all my might to make the most out of it. My mind was set on making it through to the other end of the thick forest of many unknowns.

Somewhere along the way I got tangled up in a particularly thick bush - the first of the many ahead of the unaware but trusting me. My new relationship ended abruptly without but a single warning, which was a direct blow for the inexperienced person I was. I did find my way out pretty fast, though. While still stuck in the darkness, I saw a tiny patch of blue sky above me. And then it hit me: the positives of what the fling gave me really and truly outweighed the fact that it seemed to be over. And, heck, now I had all the time in the world to focus solely on myself again!

Thanks to that, when we ended up getting back together again, I was able to see things for what they were rather than idealise a fairy tale daydream romance. The cuts on my body from the bush's thorns were like battle scars reminding me of the lesson I had learnt. And that made all the difference.

So much so that when another blow came my way, I was able to see through the thick scrub and stay right on the path. My best friend may have moved out of London and left me seemingly all alone in a huge foreign city but I understood our chapter together was meant to be over to make space for the new. Even a best friend is a separate individual with a life of their own after all. Two paths never run side by side for too long - what would be the point?

It just so happened that my path steered away from the fork where we had separated very soon after. The perpetrators of that were a bunch of suspicious yet very peculiar symptoms. They drove me straight to the bathroom one summer morning, after which a definite answer ensued: there was a new life settling itself down in my young body.

I could have reacted in a billion of ways. I could have got completely weighed down by the down-to-earth realities of the situation. A young woman spontaneously getting pregnant while living on her own in a big expensive city like London and holding down a fairly low-paid hospitality job amidst the rollercoaster of Covid-19 does not necessarily have it easy, does she?

That was not really the path I walked though. I chose to listen to my heart instead, and the heart answered. All of a sudden, no decision had ever been so simple it seemed. After all, financial trouble and everything around it were nothing more but realities of the outside world around, and those are never a constant. The baby, on the other hand, was there to stay in that heart of mine for good one way or another so the choice of continuing to grow the tiny miracle of life came to me like second nature in the end. Deep down, I knew I had it in me, that was what counted. The world would adjust in due course.

And so here I am. I have gone through a phase of being kind of homeless with barely any money and raging pregnancy nausea but I chose to follow the light and the Universe answered. Still with little money, but I'm living in a safe flat now and growing a healthy baby despite it all.

I have been spending my days scrolling the Internet I search of free furniture and such, and all I can think of is that I am thankful to be in a big city where there is so many people giving things away for them to get a second lease of life.

And so, aren't we all heroes to have made it this far? Isn't it reasonable to choose self-love when we realise we are here despite it all? We have all been made to wade through the muddy unchartered territories of an upside down world no one gave us the manual for, and we are still managing to find joy in this mess. That is definitely something we can be thankful for. That is definitely something I am thankful for. Myself is what I am thankful for.