fresh rain will sometimes make you think about this.

In two days, I'll spend 8 hours writing (hopefully) everything I've learned about my work, and offering my view on how it all fits together. Today I take a break from synthesizing ideas on neuroplasticity to spin a few, probably much less cogent, thoughts in a much larger sphere.

It's a typical Saturday morning at The Dollhouse: a girl-and-sheltie dance party (dancing around in boxers with coffee while Otis trots after, towing a stick twice his size). Every Saturday should start with a coffee-fueled sheltie dance party. This one was out on the patio, under the trees and rain which hasn't quit for weeks. Standing there with the cold rain on my neck, singing and pointing at the dog like a bad fourth Supreme who didn't make the cut, I realized: I'm so grateful to not be dead right now.

People say often, and probably not often enough, that they're grateful to be alive. Perhaps I've heard or said it so many times it's become a bit cliche, a thought I fail to connect with on some deep and stirring level (at least, it seems it should be a deep and stirring thought).  But when you conjure the image of lying dead in a church yard, it's somehow different. Or it was for me. 

My friend Jessie died when I was fourteen.  Not surprisingly, it was a wake-up call: that we're not invincible, that anything can happen, that loss can be painful and shocking, more so than I'd ever known.  Today it's a wake-up of a whole other kind.  There is so much she's missed.  Unbelievable things my teenage self never foresaw. 

Since I was fourteen I've met incredible friends, visited twelve (!) foreign countries, made homes in new places all on my own, fallen in love, fallen out of love, been terrified, been angry, been sorry, laughed and learned immeasurably. I've explored the depths of the ocean. And the depths of hearts, including my own. Most importantly I've had countless one-person dance parties, late nights with friends, lengthy breakfasts, rainstorms, palpitations around cute boys, heard amazing music and made my own. I've asked questions I can't answer, and been satisfied not to know. I got to do all this instead of laying in the ground. 

Everybody thinks about dying. Everybody thinks sometimes, whether or not they admit it, about wanting to die. As a therapist (and as a human being) I have to think about what we need to hear when we feel like dying. It's a little different for everyone, of course. For me, rather than thinking forward about all I have to live for later on (which can be an amorphous, foggy vision), it's compelling to consider all I'd have missed if life had stopped, say, when I was fourteen. Life wasn't easy since then by any stretch, but without question, nothing could make me trade it for years in a church yard.  If I feel that way about the past, even with its messes and heartaches, I imagine I'll feel the same looking back in another ten years. And ten years after that. At the very least, I have no idea what new adventures I might miss. 

So, live. Be grateful to not be dead. Stand in the rain. Ask the questions that have no answers. And be glad for all you haven't missed yet.