Submitted by: Viki Larson
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( 3 / 140 )Thank you for loving me; thank you for understanding. Thank you for letting me vent, letting me complain, for being a slouch, for being moody. Thank you for putting up with me being so worrisome. You have no honest idea how hard I fight myself to keep from crying out of sheer joy when we spend time together. Thank you for letting me in when I know that it’s rare when you do. Thanks for telling me my questions are stupid, kissing me and answering them. Thanks for saying "OW!" when I punch you during your workouts when I know I couldn't bruise a peach. Thank you for giving me credit when I am owed it and denying it to make me prove myself. Thank you for 2 and a half years of being in love and being my best friend. Without you, Aaron, I'm pretty sure I'd still be me, but not the me I'm meant to be. Thanks for fumbling the words "I love you" two weeks into our knowing each other and saying you respected me first. Then owning up to it 20 seconds later.
...and thank you for bringing up marriage before me. It makes me feel better since I thought of it first.
Submitted by: Carly
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( 2.9 / 122 )I had liver disease. I would have died, but my brother gave me half of his so that mine would regenerate. It did. His did. And now we fight all the time over nothing. I bought him a car. I re-roofed his house. I tell him how grateful I am. I'm telling you too so maybe he'll stop looking at me like I killed him.
Submitted by: Phil
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( 2.9 / 130 )i want to thank you for introducing me to the drug that has tore my life apart. without you, i never would have gone to rehab. without you i wouldnt be relocating cities just so that i dont die from this addiction. thank you hood for showing me what using lovers are. thank you for loving the drug more than me because now i have the CHOICE to live and recover. thank you for showing me that life is worth living and i can live without you and the drug. thank you for breaking me apart and shattering my soul. now i know what the bottom looks like and thank you for sharing it with me, but thank me for leaving it all behind.
Submitted by: Sara
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( 2.9 / 115 )You died three days ago. You suffered so much. I saw it all and couldn't do anything but keep seeing and making sure there were drugs and blankets and ice chips and my hand to hold. Then you were released from it. I saw it go. I am grateful for that. I have cried for all three days. I miss you, yes. I cry because I miss you already, even as sick as you were, I miss you so. But I cry harder because I am so grateful. I'm grateful for how much you loved me, for how much I loved you. How often we laughed and understood, even through your illness. I know now that it was a miracle that we found each other, that we weathered so much. I could die now but for this gratitude. I am so tired. My darling. My darling. I have no one to tell all this because you are not here.
Submitted by: Celia
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( 2.9 / 111 )I am thankful for finding a job I can look forward to each day. I am even more thankful for the fact that my boss hasn’t fired me yet. Sometimes I think we forget keeping a job can be just as hard as finding one. Every week, it seems, I throw away essential documents, oversleep by two hours, or absentmindedly insult a superior in the elevator whom I didn’t realize was standing right next to me. So I must thank my boss for seeing past these indiscretions and allowing me to keep on doing the job I love. I just hope it’s something she’s thankful for too.
Submitted by: Mark
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( 3 / 143 )I know how scared you are sometimes and how sad. I know you don't like growing old. I know you can't bear how your face has changed, but tonight at that dinner party you were happy. You were there with all of us so much that you forgot how hard you feel life can be. You forgot to worry, and I got to see what a beauty you are, Mom.
Submitted by: Your daughter
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( 3 / 134 )Undying thanks to my parents for putting up with me when I was a kid. I was a mess. I was mean. I was like the worst teenager on the planet. I'm not kidding. I slammed doors. I crashed cars. I stayed out all night. I drank and smoked and more. I'm lucky they didn't send me packing.
Submitted by: Al
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( 3.2 / 104 )i must confess to feeling grateful for presidential candidate Obama. i don't know if he can win but i find myself hoping he can. he makes me believe the system doesn't always have to prevail, that the world of politics and government along with its tired rules, back-room deals, and compromises can be remade, tossed out. he excites so many of us; i've seen it. if i have a wish now in the winter of 2008 it's that what he does and who he is is really viable and not a parlor trick, that he's as authentic as this hope feels.
Submitted by: Voter
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( 3.4 / 151 )I try to walk everyday whatever the weather. Today it was cold and colorless with the promise of more. I had a winter attitude. Colorless too. I passed a playground. It was empty except for a man pushing a girl on a swing. She was at that just-learning-to-talk stage, maybe four. She was stuffed into a bright orange snow suit and tied round and round with the longest scarf I've ever seen. It did nothing to stifle her or her energies. As she swung, she yelled, "I love this! I love this! I love this!" There was no theater in it, nothing coquettish. Language was still too new to her. She kept bellowing it as I passed, until I was out of earshot. "I love this. I love this. I love this." She said it over and over it because it was necessary for her. As bright a thing as that uncomfortable-looking snow suit. She hadn't any notion of adult habits of forgetting life's variety, its simple pleasures, of how easy it is some days to take grim solace in winter limits.
Submitted by: Walking girl
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( 3.1 / 92 )I went to this acupuncturist who used to be a physicist before she switched careers. She's out there, firmly, and doesn't apologize for it. She tells her clients to revisit a time when they felt safe or alive or happy or loved or all of the above. She says in physics that time and space are negotiable. She says something to the effect that time's ours to play with, should we want to. So there in her office with a few needles in my hands and feet I went back to Saratoga Springs in the fall when Anne was alive and walked beside me in deliberate small steps and told me she felt life was benevolent, if you let it be, if you could surrender to what it gave rather than suffer over what it didn't. And then I went back to one of the first nights you slept here, at my place, in my bed, and how I got the giggles and then you did and we couldn't stop laughing for what seemed like hours, but I'm not sure how long. I went back to your body there and mine, the heat of us laughing, and how surprised we were, how we couldn't stop. Thank you for that. For staying, for laughing, for your feet through the iron bars of my bed, for stopping time.
Submitted by: PIE
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( 3.1 / 89 )I want to thank George from True Power Training. He is a personal trainer and he has helped me find the sexy girl within. He has stood by my side through the good (those days that I could conquer the world) and the bad (those days when a twinky could conquer me). I have been overweight for the past six years. I've tried all types of things... weight watchers, jenny craig, curves gym, gold's gym, and even a couple of other personal trainers. Everything failed because although all of these programs were pretty good and although they have worked for some people, they lack one very important thing... LOVE! George showed me the one ingredient that had been missing from all of my workouts, all of my diets and all of my failed attempts to regain my sexy figure. George showed me that knowledge without love is empty knowledge that becomes useless after a while. Thank you George for helping me become the me I was before I forgot how to love myself. Thank you and God bless you and your business in 2008. If anyone out there wants to see what I am talking about, contact me and I will give you George's contact information.
Submitted by: Not Fat...Never Again (nude.paint@yahoo.com)
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( 2.9 / 104 )To my girl who gave me the best present ever -- she agreed to marry me. I'm no prize, but she is. Thank you, Sandy.
Submitted by: Bill
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( 3 / 87 )I was remembering when I was a kid. How my parents spoiled me. Christmas was like a Hollywood production every year. They took such pleasure in it, in seeing my sisters' and my surprise and excitement. I cannot give the same to my kids. I'm a single mom, but I write here not only to express my gratitude to my parents for all they did to make us feel loved but to my boys who are grateful for what I can provide, who are good kids -- brave and dignified kids -- even though I cannot give them all they want and deserve. I try and will keep trying, but for now I must thank them. They are an example to me. They are an inspiration.
Submitted by: Ginny
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( 3 / 92 )You know I was against you leaving, and yes, it was probably for all the wrong reasons. I would rather have had things stay the way they were even though I hated it. I hated that we could never go places together, that I could never call you, that you never gave me the chance... But I knew it would be worse to have nothing of you at all. You always had my back in that place, where it was so easy to fall out of step and so many waiting to pounce on you the moment you did. You always defended me. I wonder if they ever suspected?
I haven't seen you in so long now so that I know you must have changed, your perspective, your station in life, even your body. So who was right? Now can we finally say? You always said I would stop loving you, but really, you just didn’t think I was a good bet.
Submitted by: Chris
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( 3.1 / 79 )I'd just gotten on the subway, the A train, at Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, but then the F pulled in across the platform. That was the better train. I'd been waiting for it and settled for the A so when it rolled in I jumped up to transfer. The doors of the A train were closing, but I thought they'd surely bounce back. Surely other people had the same idea I had. I stuck my arm out and the doors shut on it and kept shutting. No bouncing. The train even jerked forward an inch like it was moving on, with or without my arm. Two men leapt up to pry the doors open. Their response was automatic. When they managed to push the doors back (which they even agreed were unusually determined to hold on to my arm), I got off the train to catch my breath, but I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd stayed on the train to thank them, to get their names, to shake their hands. I want to thank them now and remind everyone who visits this site that humans, even the everyday New York sort, can be kind, even beautiful, heroic.
Submitted by: Subway Sally
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( 3 / 121 )So I'm sad a lot. Not always but a lot, and I've always been ashamed. I pretend I'm happy. I work on it, go to therapy, but life's hard and sometimes it's a shitbox of nonsense and woes, and then I met this guy. We've just become friends. He's an easy-going type, not someone who passes judgment much. He tells me he needs a good deep melancholy here and there. It makes him feel human. He asks me if I might prefer being sad. I said no straightaway, but then I had to admit I do, sometimes. At the very least it means my heart's open. I'm alive and feeling even if it's not the circus and birthday and balloons kind of stuff. I've been trying to talk myself out of it for years, but what I didn't know is that you can be happy being sad.
Submitted by: Rickie
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( 3.1 / 100 )Thanks, Benjamin, for being such a dick. You helped me to stop loving you. I needed to. For too long I wouldn't let go. Then I did, had to, and opened myself up to meet someone I'm much better suited to. So I mean it: Thank god you committed to acting like such a mean-spirited, ignorant baboon. Thank god.
Submitted by: Sandra
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( 3 / 76 )Thank you for letting me smell the perfume on your wrist. I've been high ever since. Lady, I'm nuts for you.
Submitted by: George
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( 2.9 / 82 )I had a birthday party for myself. Most of my friends planned to come. One woman, Ellen, also came. I don't know her well, but I've always liked her. Some of my close friends showed up late, didn't bother with a gift; one of my friends forgot the night altogether. I tried not to be bothered by all this; birthdays come fast at my age, but I couldn't help notice that Ellen showed up early, helped me set up, and then later in the night gave me this great, really thoughtful gift. It made me feel special. It was unexpected. Thank you, Ellen, for taking a moment to think of me. You made my birthday.
Submitted by: Mary
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( 3.2 / 98 )I've been sad for some days. I can't say why exactly. The reasons shift, but today something changed. Maybe I slept well. Maybe I ate better than usual or maybe it was just time. I loved life today -- everything about it, even the subway. I loved it all and I'm grateful.
Submitted by: Anne
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( 2.7 / 94 )Rebecca:
We had agreed you might come to visit this October for your birthday, but then we let it slide. I got so caught up in work. I’ve had so much lately, too much, and so I took a much-needed break from the city and my apartment, from me. I wish I had not run out of gas so utterly, and more I wish I had contacted you to tell you how I’d let the magazine run me down, but I was caught up, dealing with the nonsense, all the deadlines and egos, and then the race for the finish line and some version of calm. So I rang you on your birthday to tell your voice mail I missed you and that I was sorry we’d not made the trip happen. I’ve not heard from you. That’s the way of distance, of lives lived separately, of inertia. But today on the subway platform one of your songs came on in a shuffle on my Ipod. There was your voice, its fine, clear pitch and texture, its beauty and feeling; and there was you there behind it, breathing there. You were performing, taking chances as you do, and because I know you, I could hear you despairing in turns and rejoicing at others. What singular songs you’ve written, lovely Becca, never mind all your poems and prose. I wish your father was not ill and in that faraway world. I wish I could make you feel as we did in graduate school, make you laugh about that woman contorting me in ungodly positions on that old tanning bed all for a simple leg wax. This is all to say, I’m awfully grateful that you’re in my life, even if you’re not at hand. I’m grateful for the ways we still know and love each other even after all these years, after all this distance. I remember you.
Submitted by: Amy
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( 2.9 / 98 )I was so sick, with a virus. I had a bad fever. I had terrible aches and pains. I live alone and though I'm young I didn't feel that way. I tried to get to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription but felt dizzy en route. My neighbor saw me struggling back up the stairs and went to the pharmacy for me. Unasked, he also got me zinc lozenges, miso soup, ginger ale and more. I tell you, it made me cry. We've never been really close. We say hi, exchange pleasantries, but when I needed someone, he was the one who stepped up.
Submitted by: Andy
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( 3 / 70 )How did he do it? Coming on sixty years ago, a Frenchman wrote a story, rooted in 18th- an 19th-century farce but focused on the then threatening landscape of interwar European bourgeois society, and filmed it. The production features what is now called an ensemble cast and is mostly talky, with a only few scenes of mild action -- a rabbit hunt, a climactic shooting, and also a pillow fight and an amateurs' stage show. But somehow, through its words, its dramatic convolutions, its all-seeing camera, and its insistence, made explicit, that we all have our reasons for both the noble and the inane things that we do, those recorded sounds and flickering shadows convey a moving warmth and indomitable hope for even the darkest of times. Part of that triumph arises from the magic of cinema itself. It's from the lambent depths of THE RULES OF THE GAME (LA REGLE DU JEU), though, that layer upon layer of elemental humanity emerge, inspiring and reassuring this viewer still. Merci, Jean Renoir.
Submitted by: D
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( 3.1 / 77 )I was anxious. I was thinking about bills, how long it's been since I got away, work, work, work. I couldn't sleep. So just before 5 a.m. I got up from bed, left my family, and went walking in the city until first light. I had never seen it at first light. It was a new place. It was glorious.
Submitted by: Robert
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( 3.1 / 71 )
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