A Somewhat Brief Note of Thanks

Thank you.

Thank you for all you are;
all you've been;
all you've not been;
and all you might become.

Thank you for your presence;
for enriching me;
for helping define me,
and what that means to me.

Thank you for your absence;
for helping me learn what it means to have something gone;
what it means to feel that void;
what it means to be without.

Thank you for filling time;
filling space;
filling memories.

Thank you for familiarity.

Thank you for the foreign.

Thank you for the positive;
the goodness;
the light;
the energy;
the being.

Thank you for the negative;
the painful;
the shadows;
the emptiness;
the loss.

Thank you for both the beauty,
and the ugliness.

Thank you for love;
for growth;
for joy.

Thank you for grief;
for atrophy;
for misery.

Thank you for freedom.

Thank you for helplessness.

Thank you for tears,
both of happiness,
and of sadness;
and reasons for each.

Thank you for fear;
for cowardice;
and for courage.

Thank you for humanity,
in all its many forms,
colors,
numbers,
strengths,
emotions,
and weaknesses.

Thank you for kindness,
and for cruelty.

Thank you for wounds,
and for forgiveness.

Thank you for examples
of all I want,
and want to be,
and all I do not.

Thank you for long,
black,
cold nights;
and for the dawns which have followed,
every time.

Thank you for the depths of depression,
anxiety,
loneliness,
and abyss of hopelessness.

Thank you for the balance of hope,
comfort,
friendship,
and warmth of connection.

Thank you for ecstasy.

Thank you for agony.

Thank you for mistakes,
misunderstandings
and the need of wisdom.

Thank you for instinct,
intuition,
and the development of understanding.

Thank you for brokenness.

Thank you for wholeness.

Thank you for the healing.

Thank you for the not healing.

Thank you for motion,
and for learning how much that matters.

Thank you for stillness,
and for learning how good it can feel and be.

Thank you for originality,
and creativity.

Thank you for demonstration,
and education.

Thank you for serendipity,
and for irony,
and for complexity.

Thank you for gratitude.

Thank you for all these things,
and much, much more.

Thank you for everything,
and all it means to have it,
however it came,
and however it turned out.

Thank you,
because I am who I am,
and what I am,
because of you -
and it matters.

Thank you, Life,
in all your many facets,

for I am truly in your debt,
simply by existing.

        Better days ahead, my friends!