How do I start this? I saw this post from 
I have seen so many posts of gratitude and I can see their happiness and sense of worth. They live amazing lives full of joy and happiness. When you are happy you tend to be grateful.
My post seems out of touch from what this challenge is a about because I am not particularly happy nor do I feel joy. In fact at times my tongue feels ashen and I cannot even taste the food I eat, nor savor the aroma of food or even appreciate the plating.
If it seems all my happiness pertains to food it is because that is my most dominant character. It is the foodie in me that makes me feel so alive. To live a life of experiencing new cuisine and travel far and wide to eat something exotic.
The last time I did this was about a year ago when life was turned topsy-turvy. I was betrayed and thrown under the bus. My reputation and dignity shattered. Yet I held my head high and did my own version of a 30 day challenge of seeing the good things that happened to me that day.
I remember writing down what made me happy that day and the day after that and the day after that. It became a good habit of focusing on the good and mitigating the bad things. I learned how to look past how bad I was being treated and focusing on the wonderful things that I did.
To give you a short background I handle HR for a company and one of my most important job was to make people happy and feel secure. To make them feel that I would always be there when they needed me.
So I focused on the people. I focused on alleviating their fears and concerns. I did my best to reach out and take the darkness they feel and replace it with positivity. I acted like their emotional sponge that helped lift the strain from their shoulders.
Crazy as it may seem I was getting strength from the sadness, from the pain and despair that people were feeling. I grew stronger when people turn to me and I make a difference.
A year after I am still here. Trying to make sense of this mad, mad world. Holding on to an image of strength and safety to people. At times though I feel empty. It is not sadness nor is it pain but just an overwhelming feeling on nothing.
I hate to admit it that the grit I have always shown is being eroded, of the patience that I have carefully trained is slowly slipping away.
Of logic that was everything should be all right and yet it's not.
Now I almost succeeded in ending it all but was stopped by a sign. A mark on my arm when I was aimlessly doodling on a meeting I was not paying any attention to.
About 15 days ago it was almost over. It came to the point that I was already planning my funeral. Made all documents and setted into what plan. I remember my sister's crying as I explained logically and emotionless as posible of my plans.
Yet a higher being might have heard one of my sister's prayers and have made it hard for me to end it. It was one person after another that was sent my way to make me feel better again.
I managed to talk down one person who was at the same point as I am. Yet I know you are reading this and it might look like a blind mouse leading another one. But who else can be a good empath, because of my desire to help people I narrowly escape.
The worst feeling comes at night when majority are asslep. When I cannot hide behind a project.
When the silence is deafening. So how do I survive?
Just like before I went back to writing and give people advise. It helped stabilize my emotional
Strength, to be able to pour out all my raw feelings and lastly to be inspired.
So it turns out I am grateful for something. I am grateful of seeing people who got better after we talk, I am thankful that they trusted me enough with their darkness and turn it to the light.
I am thankful for finding steemit and using it to get better. Lastly I have to thank myself for still being here. Getting a chance to get better.
Gratitude and happiness to all that reads the challenge set forth. We can all need that extra positivity in our lives.