I'm grateful for Q-Tips, are you?

If I were asked to describe myself in one word? I'd have to say "grateful".

I have been stripped bare. My life was not my own. My time was not my own. My schedule was not my own. The direction of my future was not my own. Even my clothes were not my own. I ceased to be me and became #9895500.

I'm often asked how I could choose slavery after having my entire existence involuntarily wrenched from my control. My standard answer is usually, "because today, I have choices and I fucking can, on my terms, in my time, with one of my choosing."

People look at my life and wonder how it is I can be so content. I don't own much more than a pot to piss in and a window to throw it out of. I can't afford to go to the movies or 'do lunch' with my friends. A telephone is a luxury I can't always afford.

They wonder how I can get so excited over what they view as insignificant things. An ice cold CocaCola. Using a q-tip. Walking barefoot in the grass. A hug from a loved one. A meal from the dollar menu at McD's. A hot bath. Using a washing machine instead of the toilet bowl. Seeing the moon. Having a bowel movement without having to use the plop-flush-plop-flush method, because there's always someone 2ft away ready to be offended by its odoriffic splendor.

I am a walking, talking, breathing miracle. I sit in my barely furnished apartment in the ghetto and I feel like the luckiest woman in the world.

I know what it's like to have nothing, literally. No choices, no belongings, no privacy, no physical contact, no creature comforts, no support system and no name--reduced to a mere number.

Cuffed cattle, dressed in DOC blues, shuffled from place to place, with OfficerUnfriendly as my steadfast escort to see TheJudgeWhoDecides.

I know how close I came to living out the rest of my life that way. I know how close I came to having someone else decide what day they would stick a needle in my arm and end my life.

I often wonder why.

Why did I get this second chance? I saw women all around me, in virtually the same predicament, face knowing that they will die a number and not a human being. Just another statistic to be debated over.

Yet, here I am, in all my technicolor glory.

In my hand-me-down life, in my rough as fuck neighborhood, having to sometimes choose between washing my clothes at the laundromat and buying kotex, and I am happy.

I feel like the sole survivor of a plane crash with all the guilt and gratitude it entails.

I know what it's like to not have any of it. I know what it's like to have even my own destiny out of my hands. I know what it's like to realize that using q-tips (and the subsequent eargasms) is something you can't take for granted. I know, that in an instant, one's life can become no longer their own.

It's all about perspective. I can look at it from the point of view that I was wronged, angry and bitter that I suffered such injustice, or I can take the stance I have now, which is...grateful. I know how good I have it and I know how much worse it could be.

I used to have an ignorant, self-absorbed sense of entitlement. I'm also grateful it was forcibly humbled out of me.

I see people all around me bemoan their lives. Always seeking bigger, better, stronger, faster. Never realizing they're one accident, one friendship, one mistake or one wrong judgment call from being where I was. Never truly understanding just how fucking lucky they are.

I'm grateful I'm not one of them.

Hell, I'm just fucking grateful I can have a child-like excitement about moons and grass and hugs and yeah, even fucking q-tips and I feel sorry for people that can't.