2016 has been chaotic; no one can deny that. For some reason (some say it was Leo's Oscar that took the world out of its course, but truth be said, things were already bad in January), this year was extremely disappointing for most people, full of unfortunate events in the most variable scales. It ended up being mystified as "the real 2012", and no year has ever suffered more shame on the internet. Besides, I feel like more and more people are concentrating on what went wrong in their lives now that they have this universal astral hell to blame, which only strengthens the idea of "2016: the forbidden year". Having this in mind, and seen how close we're to Thanksgiving (my first one!), I would like to stop for a minute now and focus on the good, sweet, small, almost imperceptible, easily forgotten things for which I'm so grateful. I encourage you to do the same.

I'm grateful for my parents, who encourage and support all my plans and dreams;

I'm grateful for Netflix, that's been perfectly filling the hole left by the far-too-absent BBC;

I'm grateful for all the books that turned into a piece of the ongoing puzzle that's my (everyone's) personality;

I'm grateful for the cook in my university's dining hall who resembles Dick Hallorann from the Shinning and who mind-reads people's ideal amount of food;

I'm grateful for the other cook, who always remembers what kind of omelet I like;

I'm grateful for my aunts and uncles, who bought me so many good books along the years, and who do care for me;

I'm grateful for all the people to whom I haven't talked in months, and yet like my articles;

I'm grateful for Lemony Snicket, who wrote pages and pages with the "I will love you even if..." anaphora in which this article is based;

I'm grateful for my friends from Recife, who still talk to me, even though we're so far apart;

I'm grateful for all my cousins, who were my first friends;

I'm grateful for the trees here on campus, which seem to have eyes, for they allow me to imagine that we live in a magical world;

I'm grateful for Tolkien, who showed me that yes, indeed, we do live in a magical world;

I'm grateful for the Brazilian translators, in whose works I'm relying right now, for English translations of romance languages are extremely dissatisfying;

I'm grateful for all the students who say "Hi" to me, even though I don't know all their names;

I'm grateful for all the students who simply ignore me, even though we've talked before, so I don't have to pretend I remember their names;

I'm grateful for my very descriptive exams' guidelines;

I'm grateful for Rick Riordan, who writes 2 relatively-happy books every year, keeping me sane as I wait for the other scarce, heart-wrenching sagas;

I'm grateful for my brother, who's always ready to marathon The Lord of the Rings with me;

I'm grateful for goiabada, a Brazilian sweet that only now I've come to realize how much I love;

I'm grateful for all the dogs that come talk to me naturally, freeing me from pretending that I didn't change my way just for them, and from asking the owners if I can pet them;

I'm grateful for my professors, who show me everyday that I'm not any special case of craziness;

I'm grateful for Jo March, who was my first literary role model;

I'm grateful for my grandma, who created a Facebook just to keep track of my writings;

I'm grateful for my other grandma, whose idiosyncrasies always set tongues wagging and give the best funny stories;

I'm grateful for my "pound" instructor on Mondays, who gives 45min classes instead of 1h;

I'm grateful for Gustave Doré, who seems to have dedicated his life to illustrating all the books that I would come to love;

I'm grateful for London West End, that enabled Les Misérables to be on stage for 30 years, and will hopefully keep it there until I have kids aged enough to appreciate it;

I'm grateful for Quentin Tarantino, whose movies' soundtracks have extended my music library for more than just musicals;

I'm grateful for my grandpa, who intimidates people with his 10/10 mustache, but who for me just looks like an older version of Freddie Mercury;

I'm grateful for everybody who read until this point, even though most of these sentences are basically internal jokes with myself;

Most of all, I'm grateful for Thanksgiving itself, which is allowing me to see my parents again.

Rethinking 2016, it was a terribly hard year for me. When New Year comes and I look back at it in its completion, I don't think I'll ever have seen a year in which I changed so much, in which the things I took for certain in the beginning were completely altered by the end. I refuse to say it was a bad year, though, for there were so many good moments in between the difficulties, and the difficulties themselves were blessings in a way. I know everyone has faced different experiences and maybe it's easy for me to say, but I think the good things, be them actually important or wonderfully silly, are always relevant. Sometimes, the only thing you can be grateful for is the ground beneath your feet, and that's reason enough. If you can look up and see the sky, stay still and feel the wind, breathe and just exist, you can have a moment of happiness, and this moment is everything. That's why I wrote the list, and though it wasn't completely serious, I believe joy is in attaching yourself, for brief seconds, to the smallest of the bright thoughts. Try it; if you want to, even tell me: what are you grateful for?