part of that is the denial one clings to while leaning precariously upon coping mechanism after coping mechanism to help one stagger through the days. part of it is shock. i have loved Christmas wholly, unabashedly, giddily all my life. childlike only in ebullience, in transparency, in glitter-strewn hope. familial strife always managed to accept hibernation’s bit in time for me to fill to brimming with timeless joy, with the love everyone else associates with Family year-round; personal tribulation always waned in the face of communal conviviality, of celebratory ceremony. even when i reeled (continue to reel) in the aftermath of heart-rending physical tragedy, peppermint-scented cheer rooted me in cozied charm, garlaned optimism, glorious vulnerability, laudable rebirth. but not this year. this year, it was everywhere but within me, and it hurt, it hurt, like scalding water striking a burn, the year’s-end spark pierced. because i finally could not be anything but devastated in the face of the rampant truth of unresolvable discord. it was so much a lie, this year, and so little of anything genuine. fully-realized was the depth of my aloneness. i have been crying it out in piecemeal ever since. i have ruined it, i fear. i awaited Christmas with such piquant desperation when younger that my dread now aches, dully, seismically. am i to lay all good to waste thusly? is awareness so deadening, so hypothermic?
not, as one of my nearest and dearest once aptly (devastatingly) described the usual proceedings, “a bad Beethoven coda.” i refuse to comment right now on What This May Mean for the future because it’s not fair to spurn hope’s alacritous courtship out of weary-hearted cowardice. in the interest of full disclosure i should also include how actively i suppress any and all upwellings of relief. their ascent would leave the water muddied by the detritus of the hurt i allowed to blanket the seafloor where, ink-robed beneath the deep-beyond-depth, their cries for credence flail muffled; stymied; hindering no progress above. this, Florence, is what the water gives me, until capillarity prevails, or i let go the pieces and expunge the murk.
I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.
head down/head up. (two sayings, neither meaning what its words imply directionally)
it’s already been a few unsteady days of adherence to 60 bpm, so a conscious disconnect from our constructed waxing-waning of time shouldn’t pose too much of a problem. it may muffle noise, silence, inference, pang. such is my hope, foolish or no, futile or no.
i know the third is temporary, but i’m sure the Allied forces didn’t mind the Germans playing nice on Christmas Day, either. i have found my peace for a short while, and i welcome it as long as it will stay. trust me when i say it takes work to keep my mind suspended in the balance necessary to keep that ephemera close. who knows if it’s worth the effort, long-term, but today is Christmas. today i treated myself, despite fervent doubt that i’d be able to do anything but anguish (#verbed). merry happy instants, indeed. even as i write this, i can feel somber reality rallying, and i already remember how sad feels (how miraculous it is that i ever forget). i hope i can remember why today worked, come morning. what i need most is to be held as i completely melt and then coalesce anew. but this may help until that takes place.
even though that last is what makes this celebration hurt a little, an undertone of throb, i’m glad that i haven’t lost it all yet. merry Christmas to you who read this.
I’m a people person until I’m not.
and don’t any of you dare call this a virtue. there is nothing more futile than the feeling of hurling oneself against a barrier at once malleable and unforgiving, transparent and adamantine, in the face of the need to not be okay. i can’t even begin to condense into words the weariness of soul that stems from bearing pain that demands connection, actualization, resolution, and in the hopes of breaching the boundaries of the “carry-on” cage, expands, acquiring greater mass, volume, edge…and encounters barriers that refuse to lyse. i’m so tired. i hurt, and i keep limping along, unable to break down in stages, just *waiting* for and shrinking from the final shove that will send each and every piece of me flying.
again/still/in saecula saeculorum.
I’m the only one who thinks it’s cold in here.
it has escaped sully for at least fifteen years, which, given the tempestuous family dynamic, is nothing short of remarkable. it sounds like childhood, like the warmth that envelops all flavors of cold. it will also probably be among the very few i’ll keep close when the time comes to establish my own set of independent variables, outside blood relation’s field of gravity. i’m not saying you have to run out and buy a copy. it may not even actually be the way i hear it. that’s fine too. i’m happy, in this case, to let memory color the sound.
