All of my friends’ tiny acts of generosity and kindness did not pass me by. Instead, they took my breath away. They filled me up. I scrolled through the messages on my phone, and they lit up like gemstones, painted a full landscape of me, dappled with light and complexity, weeds and miraculous flowers, much like the meadow I was currently gazing at. My heart swelled with gratitude for every text, even the silly meme ones. I must not be a monster. Would a monster be capable of receiving this much kindness? No—I must be loved tremendously. I must be magic.
I laughed gleefully on my rock, surrounded by towering sunflowers, which seemed to dance with my joy. And then I laughed louder, lucky that nobody was nearby. I sat up suddenly, startling an old couple. I was overcome with an urgent need to put on more sunblock. AND! To return the favors that had been extended to me. For months, I had been too afraid to text people and bother them with my nonsense, but today I whipped out my phone and tearfully texted grateful compliments to everyone. “You’re such a bomb, brilliant person, thank you for being my friend.” Send. “You mean so much to me, and I’m so grateful to have you.” Send. “It was so fun running into you the other day! I miss you!” Send.
Immediately the responses came back: “Omg! Miss you too! Love you too! Do you want to go grab coffee?” I felt like Joanna, like a normal person, or maybe even a Minnesotan. Being nice came easy. Even after I’d come down off the drugs, I soared high on these future plans, these connections I was continuing to affirm.
For a few days, it seemed so easy to be in the world with other people. I fielded dozens of phone calls and text messages with merry aplomb. After a couple of weeks, as expected, the old anxieties returned, and I could feel my brain bending back toward negativity. The shroom bliss never stays forever.
But something was different this time—a new determination to somehow make my revelations stick, outside of the shroom space.
The big black void in my head was a well-worn path built into my programming. I realized that no number of singular trippy experiences—whether they came from shrooms, acid, ketamine, hyperventilation, or ayahuasca—would ever completely overwrite this programming, no matter how transcendental.
But my trip had also shown me that there was one thing that could combat the void for a little while: gratitude. It was the flame that penetrated the darkness, that filled me all the way up. And the only way to keep the flame going was to keep feeding it. I had to force gratitude into my routines in ways I could not ignore or forget. I had to systematize the light.
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My old therapist Samantha had told me to do it a hundred times and I’d ignored her.
“Keep a journal every day this week of three things that you feel grateful for,” she said, and I agreed to the assignment but internally snorted at the idea that this stupid exercise could solve my crippling depression. When I came back the next week with nothing, she said, “Okay, can you come up with one thing a day that you feel grateful for?” I forgot. Oops. Still nothing.
But now, motivated by the residual positivity from my shroom trip, I knew it was time. I had a ridiculous pink, yellow, and blue notebook I’d snatched from the free bin at work that had FUN STUFF INSIDE stamped on its cover. Also, 100+ STICKERS! This seemed appropriate for my first gratitude journal.
I divided the first page into two columns. I titled the left column Gratitude and the right Pride. The idea was to make note of both the things that brought me joy in the world and the ways I brought joy into the world.
The first day, I wrote three things under Gratitude, and I was surprised by how easily everything came: A playlist a friend had shared with me. My boyfriend being safe and fun to talk to. A guy who’d made me a hubba-hubba huge beefcake okonomiyaki, having poured in too much batter by accident, but gave it all to me anyway with a huge smile on his face.
Pride was more difficult. It’s not every day that you get some awesome text message from someone saying they owe their whole career to you. What do you do with the rest of the days, the mundane ones where you don’t change the world? This particular day had mostly been wasted on television and social media. I’d played with my cat and snacked. I’d gone to the doctor, then walked around Manhattan aimlessly for a couple of hours before eating that okonomiyaki and meeting up with a group of friends. How had that made anyone’s life better? How had I proved my worth, my right to be here? But, I recalled, I had made my friends laugh a little. That was something. Was it enough? For this stupid journal, probably. I wrote it down. I had a productive work call. I made a bad borscht, but I made it. I sat there for a few minutes, drawing a blank. What else? Earlier in the day, I’d had to poop in a cup for my doctor. I had done an astonishingly neat job of it! Now that was worth some praise.
Well, I thought after I was done, that wasn’t so painful.
I diligently filled out the notebook every day for weeks. It was always easier to come up with the joy I’d received than the joy I’d provided. At first, I thought the tiny things I’d accomplished were cop-outs or cheats. A coffee I bought someone. A card I sent.
But after a couple of weeks of listing things I was grateful for, I came to see that the little things were everything. The little things were what I held on to at the end of the day. Single jokes that gave me the giggles. A beautiful flower arrangement, viewed through the window of a café. The fact that my cat came to cuddle me when she saw I was sad. These things gave me hope, pleasure, solace. Together, they added up to a fulfilling life.
If a simple flower arrangement could make this world just a little more bearable, then perhaps my own small actions meant more than I was giving them credit for. Maybe when I made dinner, or listened to a friend rant, or complimented a woman on her incredible garden, I was helping make this world survivable for others. Perhaps that evening, when tallying up their own wins and losses for the day, someone would think of something I’d done and smile.
And my silly little sticker-filled gratitude journal kept its initial purpose—forcing me to witness the good along with the bad. I noted in my journal that Mark or Jon texted me just to see how I was. Would they do that for someone they didn’t care about? I noted how tight someone hugged me hello. When Jimmy sent me a meme, I didn’t just laugh at it; I noted how it made me feel special knowing that when he saw something that made him laugh, he was reminded of me. Everywhere was evidence of myriad magic.
These acts of generosity kept staying with me. Kept filling the void.
Like with food—like that one miraculous Pret chicken parmesan wrap—when you take the time to savor the good, you simply need less of it. An ancient idea, but it was never too late to relearn it. As Melody Beattie said, “Gratitude turns what we have into enough.”
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