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I entered a Christmas contest recently, to be crowned queen of Christmas, and I want to win very very very badly. My entry was fucking amazing, so if I lose, it’s because RIGGED! FAKE NEWS! OBAMA!

But if I win, it will be the single greatest achievement of my life and I will be able to finally just die.

I should have put that in my entry. “If you let me win this, then you will be giving me the relief and release that I so desire: the sweet embrace of death. Help me finally end this miserable charade.”

Anyway. I don’t like Christmas because I’m religious. (lol religion.) Mostly I just borrow and steal from all kinds of cultures and traditions and religions, to make my own thing. I mean I DID grow up Catholic, so there is some strong Catholic Christmas stuff woven into every ounce of my being.

But besides that, I like making it more about paganism and Yule and the winter solstice and all these old rituals and observances that stand apart from Jesus and Christianity. (Note that I super love Christmas hymns.) and obviously there’s the whole consumerism part, which I also participate in (Santa Claus etc). I even like giving foil-wrapped chocolate coins, like the Hanukkah gelt.

Basically I’m just a thief and heathen and I don’t even care. I love Christmas and I will always love Christmas and it doesn’t matter how or why. Just let me be.

I’ll send you one of my infamous christamas cards, if you want. Just tell me your address. You won’t be sorry.

(You’ll be sorry)

And ALSO while the name Yule log might SOUND gross, it’s actually very delicious and you should eat my log.

And why do I have to be awake for it?

And why won’t my goddamn images work on this goddamn site.

And do I hate love or do I love love? Do I think I’m capable of love or do I think love is a fucking joke?

Will jilling it right now make me feel better or worse?

Why won’t you write back? I’ve written to you a hundred times and you just don’t write back. why? why won’t you write back? it makes me so sad, doesn’t it make you sad too? We had a thing, you and I. And I thought we would always always always be always. I hate being wrong. but mostly, I just want to know you’re happy, I want to see the happy, I want to feel your happiness in my bones.

And why am I still awake? I need a bedtime story. No one left to tell me one.

And where is the snow already? For Pete’s sake. Dec 2nd and still no snowstorms? ??

?????

??

Today I submitted Ry’s senior ad for his yearbook (and yes, it was in fact the last day to do so, not that it’s any of your business).

They offered eighth, quarter, half and full page sizes. I was able to purchase the full page, thanks to the contributions of Ry’s extended family. I could choose from a variety of templates, with space for a message and pictures. So I spent the majority of my day looking through old photos. It was fun and sad and left me with a little ache in my heart.

I got very nostalgic, of course. for those early years, for Boston, for the little family we were. For my little baby. It was definitely different before nick came along. Not better, just different.

I liked their father back then. We were on the same team. We were together, and I was committed to being a unit.

But he just did so many awful things, so many times, that any love and tenderness I once felt for him is gone. I look at him now and he is a stranger to me. He makes me tense and anxious most of the time. I can tolerate him in small stretches, and in our interactions, I need to keep myself removed and distant. For my sanity and safety.

But when I look at him in these old pictures, there is a little flicker in my brain, letting me know there ARE good memories, times of love and laughter and happiness, sweetness and warmth. Comfort and a feeling of home.

But it’s faint and unwanted, these flickers. What truly remains constant is the pain. Well that’s not it exactly. It’s more the memory of pain.

Because by the end, things were just so fucking awful. Absolutely miserable. Post traumatic stress. Maybe I’m being a little over the top here, but then again, not really.

For all my flaws and weaknesses, I consider myself a fairly strong person. So to admit to being in an abusive relationship, to admit to being emotionally conquered and dominated by the male in my life? Well, it’s not easy. Even now, five plus years later, I still haven’t worked my way through it.

I need to get to a place where I can feel okay with the memories of the past, good and bad. I do think I made some progress this year. Letting go of some things, admitting some stuff to myself, accepting certain realities. But it’s a long road and heavy is the burden. And no thanks to this stupid fúcking pandemic. it has not been kind to my constitution.

My goal for 2022 is to stop thinking about how things could have been different. To close the distance between what is and what will never be. To stop obsessing over the many ways I failed my kids.

It’s pointless, right? We did what we did, we made the choices we made, and I’m here now. Focus not on what I can’t provide for them, but more on what I can.

Ugh.

Today’s soundtrack:

https://youtu.be/0_z_UEuEMAo

https://youtu.be/nSoe-5bMFb8

So tomorrow is the first thanksgiving I won’t be spending with my children.

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about it. I thought I was okay. I am okay. but I am also just now a little sad about it (maybe it’s the music). Only just a little. Not so much because we won’t be together. I see them constantly, we are always together, every single god damn day, I don’t get a chance to miss them. And they’ll only be gone for dinner, not even the whole day. No big deal.

But it feels like a milestone. The first crumbling cracks. This is the start. The beginning. Of the end. You know? Ryland’s last thanksgiving as a minor. MY minor. He’ll still be here next year, I’m sure, and we will have plenty of thanksgivings in the future.

But it’s changing.

It’s all changing.

There is a horizon we all walk towards, we don’t even see it, except for now and then, for a brief second, out of the corner of our eyes, as we turn our heads, as we take a quick breath.

So tomorrow they have thanksgiving with their father, not with me, and it is okay. but I’ve finally caught more than a glance of that new (old) horizon. it is unmoving, and clearer now than it ever has been.

this time. these days. all of it. the path is shifting; so slow, so subtle, but my god with such swiftness.