Trying to be thankful

I know that Yoda says "there is no try," but I think trying and imagining a different state of mind comes before attaining that state. Tonight I'm imagining a mental place in which I wouldn't be focused on how messed up my family is and pitying myself for being born into this dysfunctional mess. Instead I would be grateful for all of my supportive friends, my health, my wonderful partner, and having the luxury of pursuing a career that I'm passionate about.

Ever since we moved into my grandmother's house I have been profoundly uncomfortable. I just haven't felt like myself. I'm not sure how to describe it, but I have felt like I don't know who I am anymore. It's a feeling that emerges from deep within my childhood, a feeling of being invisible.

Last night Beorn and I watched Denzel in "Deja Vu." Denzel, in a classic sci-fi plot, travels back in time to change the sequence of events that leads to a disaster. It's eery for him to interact, in the past, with people he knows are dead. My life seems to have taken a similar sort of Twilight Zone feel to it. As if I had woken up one day and my normal life had been replaced by some nightmare.

Another sci-fi example? (Sorry folks who aren't sci-fi fans.) "Frame of Mind," The episode of Star Trek TNG in which Riker starts hallucinating that he is in an asylum. His consciousness keeps switching back and forth between the reality of the ship and the reality of the hospital. While he's in the hospital the doctors and attendants insist on telling him that there is no ship, that he isn't who he thinks he is. My family is like that. They can look at me and completely miss who I am. It's like they are talking to someone else. I can try to talk to them, but they only hear what they want to hear.

If I spend enough time around them I start to think that I am the person that they say I am, that the world is the way they say it is.