For various reasons I have been really anxious about this week, for quite some time. The weekend before last was very similar in many ways to the one I wrote about in my post ‘Why taking a pledge to talk about suicide, can be so powerful‘. I was feeling utterly worthless, trapped, and didn’t want to carry on any longer. Once again, I ended up crying through the service at church on Sunday and then dissolving in an even bigger heap in the arms of a friend at the end of the service, and telling her how much I wanted to die. At the same time, work became particularly stressful, and therapy also hit one of those frustratingly familiar and painfully gut-wrenching brick walls where I felt stuck and very very alone. At that stage, when I looked ahead to this week, it all seemed very very scary. Knowing that there would be a number of triggers this week that could potentially make things worse, and knowing how isolated and desperate I was already feeling, I felt more than a little unsafe.

And so it’s very strange to be sitting here now, in a rather different frame of mind. And it was particularly strange to find myself on Sunday, in contrast to the weekend before, making a mental list of people and things that I was grateful for. I remember the difficult feelings that were triggered when ‘100 Happy Days’ became the latest craze on Facebook last year, and my newsfeed was filled up daily with things that my friends were thankful for. Much like the situation described in my post ‘Mental health and the holidays’, I was glad that they had things they were grateful for, but at the same time I was desperately sad and also angry; not just because of the ways in which I was struggling, but also at the fact that those very struggles lessened my ability to even be able to see or appreciate any of the things I might otherwise feel thankful for. And so prior to Sunday, I think it was a long time since I had managed to feel grateful for a few small things, without that gratefulness being mixed either with feelings of being ‘undeserving’ or feelings of an impending loss (that whatever it was I was grateful for, would be taken away).

And so with a few potential triggers still to come this week, I just wanted to make a small list of some of those people who I have felt particularly grateful for recently. They were all I think, responsible for the fact that I feel so differently now, to the way I imagined last week that I would be feeling. They are:

• the person whose random act of kindness on ‘World Kindness Day’ has stayed with me, and still keeps me feeling warm
• the friend who asks me how I really am when I say that I’m okay
• the person who last week gave me their time when they had other things to do, and told me it was the most important thing they would do that day
• the friend who held me when I thought nothing of myself, and told me I was special
• the blogger who was a friend, who became a friend who is a blogger, and whose words were even more up-building when spoken across a coffee table than across the internet
• my therapist who encourages me to stand up for myself and not to let my self-worth be defined by others. Ultimately, her words helped me to take a small step over the weekend which made a big difference. A small dose of self-worth coupled with a little kindness and affection from others, can go a very, very, long way.

I want to thank them all and to let them know they helped me to feel better, and they helped me to feel grateful. In essence, they helped me to feel as though I matter – and that’s a million miles away from where I was just a few days ago.