Notice the Magic

This blog is for finding one thing every day that makes me appreciate the precious gift of existence. I want to keep track of the everyday miracles here.

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I got to go swimming today. It felt incredible to be back in the water. It felt as natural as breathing, effortless. For the first time in months, I felt connected to my body. I remembered how it felt to fully exist inside my skin. I didn't feel like a ghost without a shell anymore. It was a very good night.

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Driving home from the dog park with soaking wet, wiped out, and profoundly content dogs with two of my best friends singing to the radio and watching the lights go by.

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Watching the fog roll in and replace the city lights with the smell of rain.

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Day One

I've been nominated for a five day gratefulness challenge on Facebook where I post three things I'm grateful for every day for, you guessed it, five days. Since that's kind of what this blog was supposed to be about in the first place, and since Facebook is the kind of place where I need to censor a lot of what I say, I decided to post on here instead.

I finished my last class of college last weekend, so it’s on the forefront of my mind when the idea of gratefulness comes up. So many people were responsible for helping me through the hell that was academia, and this could easily turn into a shopping list of people. Luckily, this isn’t the Oscars, and you can’t play me off the stage. This is a blog, and I get to put my shopping list out here if I damn well please.

- I’m immensely grateful for the caring and talented people who work at St. Ben’s that worked overtime on trying to get me my degree. Jackie, the incredible academic advisor who met with me at the beginning of nearly every semester assuring me that I could still pull off a four year degree, no matter how many strings she had to pull or loopholes she had to find for me. Ben, the statistics professor who let me turn in work a year and a half late and took time out of his summer not only to grade my mind-bogglingly late work, but also to explain how two-way ANOVAs work. Laura, the therapist who patiently waited for me to open up about my daddy issues and listened to literally hours of ranting about how awful ROTC boys were and how much a conservative Midwestern private college was crushing my soul. I'm grateful for Jen, who never judged me for how stupid the ROTC questions I asked her were and always knew the answer. I'm so grateful to Annie for listening to me whine about life over innumerable glasses of whine and/or tea and validating me more than any person should ever have to validate another.

- I’m grateful for my education itself. Not just the opportunities having a college degree will afford me in the future, but the inherent value of improving your knowledge base and academic abilities. I’m grateful for my stint as a nursing major that left me knowing not only that I could never deal with another person’s bodily fluids but also how those bodily fluids contributed to keeping the human body alive. I’m grateful to research methods and statistics for keeping me from ever falling for a study that was conducted years ago and refuted multiple times that tells me I shouldn’t vaccinate my kids or that I should eat a strict diet of kale and avocado for the rest of my life. I’m grateful for the awakening I had to the injustices of the world so that I can stop being part or the problem and start being part of the solution. I’m grateful to ROTC for teaching me how to disassemble and reassemble an M4 in 33 seconds. And what an M4 is. Come the zombie apocalypse I’ll probably be even more grateful than I am now. 

- Finally, I am profoundly grateful for Smith 7. That apartment was the first time that any place at St. Ben’s felt like home. I will never be able to put into words how much it meant to me to have a home and roommates that I was excited to get back to at the end of every day. Living with people who offered unconditional support and love to me every day was the reason I stayed sane. You are the blood they were talking about when they said that blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. Liz, Sara, Keegan, and Kayla, I will never be able to find sufficient words to tell you how much you guys mean to me or how grateful I am for our home.

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This song is today's tiny piece of magic. I was listening to it on the bus and it brought me so much joy. I don't know why, because it's not a particularly happy song, but I'm not going to question it.

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Spent all day in the Arboretum for ROTC training. It was a beautiful day and I got hella sunburned.

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The sun coming up this morning.

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Today's piece of everyday magic was how the flag in the middle of campus looked with the snow falling gently around it. It was so peaceful and it made everything feel quiet.