Gratitude is forced upon me by the outside world
By people who want to tell me what my life is and isn’t
By people making assumptions about the way I live
About what I have and what I am lacking
When in reality
Nobody knows anything about others
Nobody knows what happened to you except you
Your gratitude comes from within not from a holiday or a relative
You do not need to be thanking the universe all the time
Simply for being alive
Because that life might be full of despair and anguish
And that’s okay
There will be periods of immense thankfulness
And periods of deep anger at the world
They come and go
They are not controlled by a schedule on a calendar
We cannot control the events or the feelings
We can simply live them all.
Letters From the Fog 