omfgiforgottodomyreverb - day 14

In the piles and piles of dumb that happened yesterday, I managed to lose my short term memory. I was actually wandering around all afternoon/evening trying to remember whatever task I was trying to accomplish only seconds before. That makes doing work hard. It also makes remembering to blog hard. [the amount of effort I had to use to NOT write a "getting hard/that's what she said" joke is embarrassing.]

So here it is... what should've been done last night: DAY 14

What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?

I feel like I have tackled so many negative aspects of my life in the last year. I still have a lot of things to improve, but where I am now is only about a billion times better than where I was this time last year. All that change causes a lot of stress, and as I've mentioned before, I don't handle stress well.

Side story: I used to [years ago, at this point] drink heavily just to deal with the every day stresses of my personal life and my general unhappiness with where I was and what I was doing. And when I say heavily, I mean black-out drunk at least 3 times a month. I had a problem. When I realized WHY I was drinking to such an extent that I was endangering myself regularly I knew I couldn't ignore it anymore. THAT is why I packed up all my belongings and drove myself across the country to a place I'd never even visited before. I knew that being in Arizona was the root of my unhappiness. I wasn't ever comfortable there, even as a child. I was very close to a lot of issues that I knew I couldn't over-come yet [or still, for that matter]. I hated feeling stuck. I hated the weather. I hated the sunshine. I needed to escape. When I finally moved I had no trouble cutting back on my alcohol intake, seeing as I had no friends to drink with, and I was living with my pregnant sister at the time, so she wasn't going to buy alcohol. Since the drastic cut-back I have become insanely sensitive to all alcoholic beverages [no food + 1 beer = drunk] and I can't even smell most hard liquors without wanting to vomit. If its not beer or wine, I honestly can't drink it anymore. Why am I discussing this now? Because I feel like without this knowledge you [the reader] couldn't begin to grasp WHY I'm so grateful for the one thing that I've really come to appreciate this year. Without this one thing, I have a very strong feeling that I'd be floating in Cranberry Vodkas right about now. /rant

All the stresses of the last year where greatly calmed or talked through or dealt with because of my amazing boyfriend. He is the most amazingly logical person, and he's so relaxed about all of the stupid things that I tend to stress about that he somehow manages to let me be stressed and then talks me down out of my insanity without becoming a headcase himself. I don't know how he puts up with me some times. In fact, before we started dating he let me rant at him about some other guy being a giant pain in my ass. I can't remember if he ever actually gave me advice about said "guy," but I do know that whenever we hung out I felt so much more calm about things. He exudes serenity without even realizing it. I couldn't function without him.

I try to tell him and show him how much I appreciate him as much as I can, but sometimes I feel like its not enough. Is there a way to express to someone that they've kept you as sane as possible and that you don't know what kind of person you'd be without them in your life? And sometimes I feel like my constant stressing and ranting and freaking out make him feel like he HAS to calm me down. I worry about worrying too much. lol. What an amazing brain I have. I definitely want to show him my appreciation more, I just don't know how. Telling someone you love them or appreciate them over and over and over just turns into words, now matter how much you think you mean it. I need some new ideas. :D

<3 pennilane