being thankful & being alone

This is my first, and hopefully last & only, Thanksgiving where I am alone. All the Facebook statuses and Tweets and mass texts about thankfulness & gratitude have been pouring in all day. I'm alone and sad and not  exactly brimming with grateful joy, but even as I reflect on what I have been blessed with (mostly "who"s I have been blessed by), I am sad. I ended up alone after a few little incidents and decided it was probably for the best that I just take some time to get work done... my to-do-list is starting to catch up with my blessings list in length. Not a good sign.

I've grown apart from a lot of people in the past year, mostly the past 6 months. I'm not sure if there is any way to have too many friends, but maybe that's what happened to me; maybe I just had too many people in my life and something had to give. 

Leaves change and people change. It's like when the colors in the trees start changing and it's beautiful (as a Texan, I mostly know this from photos and movies. We have a very short time of pretty fall trees.). The leaves are all sorts of reds, oranges, and golds, but if you get too attached to that you will be disappointed when they fall. Maybe that's what happened to me. Maybe I enjoyed the new friendships like a child might enjoy new leaves.

When leaves fall, we rake our yards. When people change or hurt us, there isn't much to do.

It was hard to make a collage of gratitude over the past year because so many of the photos I've taken were of blessings only temporary. It's hard to be thankful for moments that don't flee, but rather abandon. Maybe this is where the saying "don't cry because it's over, smile because it happens" comes in. Somehow though, it's hard for me to smile right now. Svetty told me the other day: "you don't need a lot; all you need are a few good & true friends."

This past year has brought me much inspiration and love. Two of my favorite additions to my heart are my NRL Academy girls and my best friend in the world, the truest friend I've ever known, Ryan. 

Here's to another year and hoping to be grateful for the same things next year. Reminds me of a quote I saw recently on Pinterest: "What if you woke up today with only the things you thanked God for yesterday?"

Just walked away from this entry for a bit to answer the phone and now I think I am sadder than ever. I thought I would like being alone more than I am liking it. At the same time, there's not anywhere else to be that would make me less sad than the company of myself. It's a pathetic paradox, really. Sigh.