I wake up kind of early. The Grandma Gross rolls my mom and I made the night before would have risen by now, so I’d preheat the oven. The catch, of course, is that I always forget — what temperature do I preheat it to? I knock on my parents’ door, waking them up, to ask.

350. I set it, then turn the TV in the living room to channel 8, NBC. I always estimate the timing of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade incorrectly — it starts later. In the meantime, I watch the coverage in my pajamas, keeping my nose alert for the smell of the sticky buns warming in the oven. They’re the best part of the morning. A family recipe, bread dough rolled thin and smeared with tons of butter, brown sugar, walnuts, and raisins. Soon, I’ll have to take the tin foil off so that the tops get brown and crispy.

When they’re finally ready, the parade is starting. I quickly pluck a few rolls onto my plate, spooning the caramelly syrup from the bottom of the pan over them. I pour myself a glass of ice-cold milk, then settle onto the couch to watch the parade.

Soon my mom will be up, to start with the cooking. I’ll be called into help, but mostly she’ll do it herself so that I can return to the parade. Then the family will start arriving: aunts, uncle, grandmas and grandpas and cousins and their family dogs.

We’ll gather together, and we’ll be thankful.

…

But not this year. Not even this year without me.

This year, I’m working a full day teaching English in South America, preparing for finals, and shopping at the Chinese Mall, and tanning on my friend’s rooftop.

This year, my parents are celebrating in different places altogether. This year, my mom wouldn’t have been there to remind me of the correct temperature, or to start cooking. The turkey wouldn’t be in the oven. In fact, it’s doubtful that oven will ever see a Thanksgiving turkey again.

I could be sad about all of this. Well, I am sad about this. In fact, I’m fending off tears in the teacher’s lounge as I type this.

…

Instead of waking up to my Grandma-Gross-roll-anticipating stomach, this morning I woke up to my usual 6:45 alarm. I put my phone’s music player on shuffle while I took my morning shower, and as I turned the water off, sad at the thoughts that I’ve been trying to avoid since August, I was assaulted with lyrics from a teenage favorite:

One thing I’ve got to say before sales dive
Stay positive and love your life

I smiled.

Things won’t be the same. That fucking sucks, and I’m angry about it, and I’m sad about it, and I want it to undo itself. But there are still so many good things about my life, including that I have the opportunity to live and work abroad. I have a boyfriend and great friends who all love me. My family, as much as I might hate the reality they’re in now, is awesome.

There’s plenty to be thankful for. And this Thanksgiving, I’ll remember it.

Even if it’s not to the taste of perfectly cooked turkey and Grandma Gross rolls.

…EDIT

Given the info that I’ve learned in the two hours since writing this, I felt compelled to add a bit more.

I found out during my last class that one of my students took his own life last night.

I didn’t believe it at first…surely, the student who was constantly smiling, giggling his little laugh, and was incredibly good at English couldn’t have been in a suicidal place.

I was wrong.

It just goes to show that we can never know if someone is depressed. I should have already known that — I was pretty damn good at hiding it myself back in March-June of 2010.

But I realize that I’ve been sort of blessed in that I have an incredible outlook. Even though I can be cynical and ridiculous about a lot of things, I have an eternal optimism that has been shaped by the positive people, the positive music, the happiness that I’m lucky enough to have in my life.

Stay positive. Love your life. It’ll never be perfect, and as Tall Brewnette wrote on my facebook today, “heartbreak comes in many forms…but nothing changes when you’re comfortable.”

And most importantly, share that positivity. You never know who needs it most.

Only six weeks left. Six weeks to the end.

I see myself back home. The hugs from friends I haven’t seen in too long. The laughter, the love. The rain, the grey skies, the music and newest trends I’m missing out on. Six weeks, and I’ll have all of it again.

I love my life. Not here. Not there. I love all of it, all of the people in it, all over the world.

Do you ever become grateful to the people who’ve hurt you? Sometimes I do. I think about them, the different ways they’ve cut and bruised me. I think about how broken up I was, how I felt that I would never heal.

I have a cut on my thumb that I got from carelessly slicing through some bread yesterday. I let it bleed, rinsed it, inspected it. I pulled the small wound apart to see layers of white skin, without a speck of blood. Minutes after I wounded my own flesh, my body had aleady clotted the blood. It had started to repair itself, regenerating cells to join those bits of flesh back together.

Soon, any trace of it might be gone forever, without a blemish of evidence that ever indicated pain. Or, maybe it will take longer to heal, leaving a toughened bit of skin. Something to match my other scars. Something to remind me.

It’s kind of incredible, when you think about it — that our bodies can heal and recover from all kinds of stresses and wounds, many without a trace of having ever existed. Our bodies are built to be repaired.

And for some reason, we always forget that this applies to the whole. Our bodies, of course, but also our minds, and our souls.

People have hurt me. I’ve hurt people. Humans, for all of our advancements in technology and human rights, will still hurt each other. Relationships are complex, fragile, and they’re never infallible. We push each other, we fall. We cut each other, we bleed. Sure, our bruises and our cuts on our minds and souls aren’t on display the way they are with our bodies, but they go deeper. They often scar badly, and take much longer to heal.

But they still heal. With more care, with more pain, but we heal. We’re made to be broken. We’re made to heal, and when we do, we bear the marks of injury as a reminder.

So I’m sometimes thankful to them, those people that pushed me, that cut me, that beat the shit out of me. They’ve left impressions unable to be forgotten, even if I wanted it so. They’ve made me this way, maybe even more than those that have never hurt me. They’ve shaped who I am, and they’ve helped give me this life that I love so much.

If you’ve ever hurt me — thank you. Chances are good that I’m over it, and I just smile to myself when I think of you now. Thanks for this scar.

You only have one life. Live it. Try to be happy with it. Especially when it seems the hardest.

Two years, seven months.
One-hundred-ninety-nine posts.
Infinite change.

“People don’t change,” I’d told him adamantly. There was an anger, a harshness is my voice that wasn’t typical for me. Well — maybe it was for the time. Somewhere in the dark, I could feel his eyes rolling.

“They don’t,” I insisted. “People always say they’ve changed, and maybe they work at it for awhile, but they always revert to who they were to begin with. They don’t change, they only make an effort to be better or different. Sometimes it’s successful, and sometimes it isn’t. No matter what, whatever flaw they’re trying to change is hiding just beneath the surface. It’s there. They haven’t changed.”

I believed that vehemently a year and a half ago, when I wrote this entry, explaining why I’d told him that. Because I had never changed. As much as I didn’t want to be, I was still a coward. I was still lazy. I was still a liar.

Coward. Lazy. Liar.

Those were my three fatal flaws. They were a part of me. They were lifelong enemies, and I’d be fighting my whole life against them.

Except fast forward to a year and a half later — here we are. Am I still a coward? Am I lazy? Am I a liar?

Well, let’s see. Despite never being outside of the country, save for Mexican resorts, despite not speaking the language, despite a constant fear of never making friends — I moved to Chile.

More than that, though — I’ve thrived here. I fought past my fear of putting myself on a limb to make a lot of good friends. So…I think, that even though there are parts of me that still make me nervous, like calling my boss to make sure I have a job when I get home, I’m pretty confident in saying that I’ve kicked that fear in the ass. It no longer defines me and what steps I take in my life.

I’ll get rejected someday. But that’s okay.

Lazy? Sure. I just finished grading the midterms I gave two weeks ago. I took a three or four month blog hiatus. I have my moments, but in working very independently with my old job, and with the job I have keeping internet stuff maintained, being flat-out lazy isn’t really an option.

Am I lazy? No. Unmotivated? At times. But aren’t we all?

How about liar? I only lied in the past to cover up those two other flaws. So, without having to deal with those two much, my need to lie is dormant. We’ll see how it fares when faced with necessity.

Coward? Nope. Lazy? Change the vernacular — I’m just occasionally unmotivated. Liar? Negative.

I was talking with one of my best friends on Skype yesterday when it dawned on me…I’ve actually changed. 

But I still think I was halfway right — trying to change, gauging your progress, making that constant effort, isn’t how you make real change happen. If you’re fighting to be different, it can’t be all that real.

Instead, after a number of experiences, both based on actions of your own and on outside influences, you’ll turn to look down the path you’ve been walking, and what you’ll see are the pieces you’ve left behind. You’ll look in the mirror and notice a new laugh line. At that, you should smile. Somehow, you’ve changed.

Back then, I was terribly unhappy with myself and my life. I obsessed over those flaws, worried about them, battled with them, and always felt like I was losing. It wasn’t until I stopped giving a shit, when I became too happy with my life and the friends I had around me that I could start to really change.

And part of that change is completely credited to this blog, this small community that I’ve had reading along with me, cheering from the sidelines. Here I am now: two and a half years, 200 posts, a whole new person.

Thank you for that. When I get home I’m making you cookies. Really!

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, it’s spring here now.