I love holidays. I live for the moment it becomes seasonally appropriate to listen to Christmas music (I was blaring “Sleigh Ride” in my car this past August) and love buying chocolate in bulk on Valentine’s Day. I whole-heartedly embrace the celebratory attributes of every holiday, whether historically important or a just a sappy Hallmark creation, and despite the whole “hard, cynical, and emotionally avoidant” caricature I seem to have drawn regarding various subjects, holidays change everything. I am the first to get warm and fuzzy at cheesy rom-coms, particularly ones that intertwine Christmas spirit in the plotline. Love Actually is my second Favorite Movie of All Time, and The Holiday pretty much melts my heart (although that might just be the significant screen time spent panning on and off Jude’s spectacular jaw line). And that weird shiver you get when your heart can’t handle all of the circumferential joy and happiness it’s taking in and you have to, like, awkwardly shift your body in the general flow of movement as to not appear at all affected? I own those.
That being said, Thanksgiving is today and there are a lot of things not just to bethankful for, but that I am thankful for. Things I may have only registered as a blip on my conscious last year because my situation was so different.
Today, in general: Was spent with family, being completely ridiculous and irresponsible with food, and with the company of two good friends. The celebration/condemnation of our high school humiliation was acknowledged with a night break in to our high school and a pack of cigarettes. Disregard turkey, French fries from Del Taco at 9pm never tasted better.
Friends, aka my lovelies, the Parisians, and Best Friend: I love and am completely thankful for the friendship Best Friend and I have (but really the relationships I have will all of the Parisians.) No matter the distance and the total impersonal attitude our texts usually garner, we easily fall into place, connect, and bond as if nothing has changed from five years ago. Our lives are going a million miles per second in every which direction but at the end of the day, none of that really matters. I love these people more than I could ever express and am so thankful to have an environment in which I can be myself and feel safe and loved regardless.
Family: I could talk up my family for hours and probably do speak too much of them. Unconditional love at its finest, even my brother's snippy comments roll off my back now that my visits home rarely break the 72-hour mark. Thankful for just the fact that I am in the house with all of them as I type this and how we had family nap time earlier as soon as we got home from dinner. I associate them with comfort and a support system I don't have to worry about, and for that I am thankful, whether I am with them or not.
Warmth: Warm clothes, warm cookies, warm personalities, warm beverages, warm houses. If there's anything that provokes coziness and contentment, this is it. I'm thankful that, on a day like today, each of these has made an appearance. And I hope the same for you.
Health: It's cliche but not really when you think about it. I'm thankful that I am still standing after this week, when my total hours of sleep barely scrapped the 20 hour mark. I am thankful that my body tolerates this abuse but moreover, I'm very lucky to be alive in general. Thank you heart for being strong because I couldn't ask for more than this.
Having a major that allows me to idolize Hillary Clinton, read the Economist and the New Yorker, and plot the supply and demand of sex: Sometimes I worry I'm not a legitimate nineteen year old because I watch the news every free chance I get, am never seen without a newspaper, could tell you Syria's current GDP per capita, and the WSJ is my most frequently received tweet. But I'm a nerd and a partial loser and I just love politics and studying China's economy is really fun for me. And if I am considered a boring old person for that, then bring on the apple sauce.
And so I hope you find much to be thankful for today. The world is a lovely place to be.
xoxo, aub
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