journal entry #3

blogmas day 7

eleven months have already gone by and now december is slipping past my fingers. someone mentioned the other day that there are only two more sundays until christmas. i felt my stomach sinking at the thought.

my family and i haven’t even put up our tree yet. it’s sitting outside our garage in a bucket of water. every year i think we’ll get christmas decor up before the busyness of the season sets in (which is right about now) and it becomes impossible to plan anything. but the inertia of getting christmas decorations up right after thanskgiving stops the second week of december and i become stagnant until the few days before christmas.

there’s a sense of melancholy that settles over me this time of year. a disconnection that begins as the threads connecting me to reality wear thin. during a time when families travel to gather together, and friends have holiday parties i wish nothing more than to sink into the background. animals hibernate this time of year, why can’t i?

yet there are so many things i want to do during the holidays. too many. instead of feeling excited by them the ideas crowd around. they are so loud that i can’t think between the suffocation of them all.

i want to drive around looking at christmas lights people have set up while listening to holiday music and drinking hot chocolate. i want to go to the city with friends to see the christmas decor and walk around the winter village that is set up this time of year. i want to go ice skating and decorate gingerbread houses afterwards. i want to sit in my aunt and uncle’s house on their couch next to the christmas tree and feel the warmth that makes me feel safe. i want to have friends to go holiday shopping with.

i want.

i want.

i want.

perhaps it is the wanting and not the ideas themselves that weigh me down. wanting for things i cannot have when most of my friends are online and i spend more time at work than at home.

it was terribly windy and rainy yesterday and as i walked to the car after a shift at the restaurant the rain ran its icy fingers down my face, soaking through my shirt collar. the wind whipped my bangs into my eyes and made the branches wave spectrally against the hazy night sky. the rain dried up by this afternoon, but the wind remained. it is this type of december weather that customers complain about when they walk inside that can actually make me feel something. the wind cuts through everything.

the holidays used to be a time of excitement and impatience when i was younger. my mother made an advent calendar that hung on the basement door. ever day i would open one of the matchboxes on it that she had painted either red or green and inside there would be an activity for that day: bake cookies, decorate the tree, watch the muppets christmas carol…but after i got a sister things changed.

this time of year can be terribly painful because of loved ones lost, family dynamics, trauma. my sister brought twelve years’ worth of memories that my family and i will never know. why does happiness turn to guilt so easily inside me until i am sick with it. a rolling nausea in my stomach that will never go away.

“and their joy shall turn to ash in their mouth” where is that line from?

if we could wholly bear the pain of others, what damage might we cause ourselves in the process?

my mom has told me that it’s normal for the holidays to lose their novelty as you grow older because christmas is no longer what your parents make it to be for you, instead you have to make it for yourself. but this sadness of december isn’t simply me growing older and christmas losing its magic.

there is guilt for the childhood i had and my sister didn’t, for wanting to be happy this time of year when it’s so painful for others, for everything.

there is a loneliness too. the kind i get while watching a show where a group of friends are just living life together. despite being an introvert, despite trying to become fully comfortable spending time with myself and doing things i want to do alone i always come back to this feeling. maybe the holidays simply amplify them feelings.

still there is so much to throw myself into – the euphoric holiday rush i get at work, the momentary happiness of helping customers, seeing coworkers coming back from christmas…how much of this happiness is based on what i’m doing for others?

i have always been good at drowning out difficulties, throwing them like chaff into the wind hoping that they will blow away. they always come back though and settle at my feet for me to trip over. living vicariously isn’t living at all in the end.

how do you begin healing the holidays when there is hardly time to do anything except get through them?

~ Ming