10 Literary Things You Should Be Thankful for This Year

Sometimes life can be hard, and there are plenty of reasons for it. You tripped over nothing and fell flat on your face. You got something stuck in your teeth during lunch and didn’t know about it until you got home. You completely and irredeemably fumbled a conversation with a cute person who may or may not have been your soulmate, thereby ruining your chances with them forever and ensuring you’ll eventually die alone. It happens.

But if you’re feeling like maybe being swallowed up by a giant hole right about now wouldn’t be such a terrible thing, remember that things could always be worse. You could’ve been a character in a novel, and we should be celebrating the fact that you’re not. So this year at Thanksgiving dinner when your mom makes everyone go around the room and say what they’re thankful for, we’re giving you permission to use one of the following:

1. Be thankful you’re not a lovestruck Midwestern boy who acquired his fortune through illegal means in order to win a girl’s heart but wound up getting shot in the pool due to a misunderstanding.

2. Be thankful you’re not an awkward, bespectacled asthmatic trapped on an island full of British choir boys who will eventually succumb to their inner darkness and murder you with a boulder.

3. Be thankful you’re not married to Mr. Collins.

4. Be thankful you haven’t been cursed by the gods to suffer captivity, constant shipwrecks, Sirens, cannibals, sea witches, and hungry one-eyed giants only to arrive home to find your house has been taken over by suitors looking to marry your wife, and also your dog is dead.

5. Be thankful you didn’t wake up as a bug today, resulting in a considerable financial burden on your family who now hates you.

6. Be thankful you didn’t fake your own death to be with the love of your life only for him to fail to get the memo and commit suicide, forcing you to kill yourself for real.

7. Be thankful you didn’t spend nineteen years in jail after stealing a loaf of bread, only to be hunted down upon your release by a police inspector who apparently has nothing better to do with his life.

8. Be thankful you’re not currently stuck on Mars, forced to grow potatoes out of your own feces.

9. Be thankful you haven’t been accused of witchcraft by a jealous teenager in an extremely puritanical town.

10. Be thankful you’re not a woman suffering from a mental illness in the 1890s, given that people back then understood neither mental illness nor women.