Janine

Reasons to feel unlucky: I’m childless, have hidden disabilities, recurring disabilities, chronic illness,, and a few months ago lost my mother to a slew of terminal diseases, which the cancer won.

Reasons to feel lucky:

Well. This is going to take more than a list.

Let’s start with the obvious. I’m in a long marriage to someone who is simultaneously my best friend, support worker, silent business partner, great company, and yet somehow the most frustrating person I’ve ever met. I have a cat. I won’t bother explaining the obvious benefits there. It’s a cat. They’re just terrific, and don’t At me with your disagreements.

And then there’s this. We talk a lot these days about the 1%. Don’t worry, I’m not about to reveal that I’m one of them. If only! But I can reveal that I’m still one of the richest people in the world. That is I’m one of the people that have a roof over their head, a safe bed to sleep in at night, fresh clean drinking water, a basic education that left me able to read, write, and do basic math, access to emergency health care (by which I mean alcohol to clean out a wound and a bandage to keep bacteria out), the right to free speech, access to the internet, and both hot and cold water that comes out of a tap right in the house. That’s it. That’s all it takes to be one of the wealthiest people in the world, because most of the population of the globe doesn’t have access to all of those facilities at the same time. They might have a safe bed, but not safe drinking water. They might have both bed and water, but no basic education. For the vast majority of people it’s an uphill struggle to be educated, fed, watered, and sleep safely.

We’re trained from a young age in regions that have all these desirable aspects of life, to see them as mundane, as workaday. Yet many of them are nothing short of ongoing miracles we take for granted. We’re so busy envying people like Madonna, who can drop $12,000 on a handbag without noticing, or Jeff Bezos who owns, well, everything, that we fail to notice the stupendous queue snaking behind us, any one of whom would cheerfully gnaw off their left arm to get a shot at the lives we complain about.

Each time I get into bed at night, I have a quick think about the aspects of my life I’m most grateful for. Often it’s those very simple requirements, bed, water, healthcare, that make the top of the list. Sometimes I remember to be grateful for my cat, and if I’m not too tired, my other half.

And while I might have missed out on marvelling at little baby toes, being astonished at how fast kids grow, and being able to compete with mothers over how well I dressed to drop the children off at school and how good their exam results were, I also missed out on potty training, meetings with teachers because they hadn’t done their homework, the belligerent teenage years (I do not feel I’m missing out there at all), or the now almost inevitability of having them live with me until they’re almost 30 because zero hour jobs don’t pay enough to cover rent and food at the same time.

So do I feel lucky? Yes. Yes I do. There will always be the days when my bones ache with the children-shaped hole in my life, but that’s lessening as time goes on, as all loss does, as all grief over a life lurched in a radically different direction without consent will do. On the occasions I forget and walk back into the mud-filled emotion I know it won’t last long because I’m not living there. I want to live in the lucky life, the one I was given without my even knowing. And I can, because I have a roof over my head, a safe bed to sleep in, hot and cold running water, and fresh clean drinking water.

Life’s a lottery, and I might not have won a mega-millions draw, but I did win the equivalent of a few hundred on a scratch card, and I’m more than ok with that. Because I do feel very lucky indeed.

Photo by Puck Milder on Unsplash