No, I’m Not Fucking Writing About Being Grateful or Thankful One More Time!

How some journaling prompts just make me feel despondent especially when the PDA is strong.

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This is in lieu of Poetry Wednesday, cos I’ve not got anything for you there.

Hello Red Cabbage Heads,

I did say some time ago that I would try to write a cheery essay. I feel this is not going to be it. You have been warned.

Photo by Gabrielle Henderson on Unsplash

I am in the process of doing various journaling prompts and have done in the past. This time it’s to try to get the creative juices flowing again. And in the main I am either enjoying them or at least finding them interesting. However, and this may seem ungrateful in some respect, especially when most of these are given for free… but, for goodness sake please stop telling me to think about what I’m grateful and thankful for. I think I’ve encountered at least 5 of these prompts in the last 3 weeks, and now my PDA (pathological demand avoidance) has kicked in and I can’t do any prompts at all.

I really dislike journaling about gratitude and thanks because a) it is incredibly overdone and seemingly simplistic and yet not and b) most importantly I feel left out, ostracised from the exercise, it feels ableist and it annoys me that I feel that way.

Now before you go off on one or stop reading as I’m an ungrateful ingrate (yes, doubly, deliberately, ungrateful). . . Let me explain. For someone who is chronically ill, living in pain everyday, with very limited energy, being invited to be grateful all the time is galling. So very galling.

The only way, the ONLY way I get through some days is by noticing the little things and forcing myself to find some meagre thankfulness in it.

Oh look! I just woke up again and yet I’m still completely exhausted and in a lot of pain. My medical life is just as bad is it was before I slept. But yay, hark! A bird is singing outside (if I can hear it passed the constant tinnitus). I won’t be able to get up in time to see it though, my shambles to the window too slow, too sore. But I must make sure I’m grateful I got to hear it.

Photo by Ronan Hello on Unsplash

It’s a bit like when people ask me how I am and then insist they really want to know, really, really want a full run down, not my simple “diddling along”. I always ask them if they are really asking me to do a body check and to categorise all my issues precisely. And when they say yes, and I explain how doing that will make me so infinitely aware of pain levels I’ve been suppressing, or how absolutely shit I feel 99.9% of the time, and I would really rather not, I hope they won’t press. But if they still insist I will go into the full rundown and about 1 minute in their eyes start to glaze, and after another minute they start to try to back away, and still I continue - I mean, they asked, they insisted, and they brought the tirade upon themselves. And then I spend a long, long time stuffing those symptoms back into the box they were released from and my life becomes harder for a time, all because they asked.

Photo by Ashin K Suresh on Unsplash

And yes, I could, and do, skip those prompts, but I need to read them first before I decide to move on, and that is triggering too.

Nelly Bryce

in her Journaling advent prompts managed a better prompt

Journaling advent - Day #15

I distilled it into 3 words in my journal.

Various! Magic! Explore!

These are my thoughts. What is magic? How does it exist in its many and varied ways? Now isn’t this a better question than ‘what are you grateful for?’ Basically it is the same question but phrased so much better; and that in itself is magical. A moving on from the mundane and generic (the question that is always asked) to the magical, the less obvious. So what is magical? So much! So much!

The tiniest of fungi photographed by an enthusiast and placed to share with others.

redal.uk

A post shared by @redal.uk

Another photographer who placed a new miniature pond in a Dutch forest and films the daily visitors, mainly birds but occasionally deer or other animals.

martijn.nugteren

A post shared by @martijn.nugteren

All of this and many others that I enjoy without having to think ‘am I grateful about this?’

So please, think before constantly asking me to be generically gratefully. It’s so worn, so . . . generic. Make it more explicit. Make it detailed. Why not, think and consider your favourite pen and why you like it so much? Or think about why your favourite birds are your favourite birds? Or your favourite instagram person who makes you smile? Why is it always just ‘what are you grateful/thankful for’?

So here endeth my moany groany sermon for today. Maybe the next one will be that cheery one I talked about before.

Ta-ra Tx

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