Holiday.
Today there is an invitation to drop in on some friends up in the suburbs. There will be cookies and meat and whatnot.
Tomorrow there is an invitation to FaceTime with some friends in New Orleans.
But it is winter and all I kinda really want to do is stay inside where it's warm and enjoy the silence of a day with very few cars on the road.
I dunno. Ever since Christmas stopped being HEY I GET ALL THIS LEGO AND ALL THESE BOOKS it's kinda lost its allure. Especially because around that time is when my father died. It went from yay bright lights and gifts to a reminder of a big emptiness in my life, and it's never really recovered. Well, sort of. I don't usually dwell on my dead father on the day, but I am definitely much more likely to spend it in solitude than to seek out people. I kinda lost what little interest I had in seeking out people then. And it didn't help that it kinda became “the day we'd get dressed up and go eat somewhere with Grandma, while she bemoaned the fact that her husband and sons were all dead”.
This sounds much more depressing than it actually is! I just enjoy solitude and silence on these CELEBRATE FAMILY TOGETHERNESS!!!!! holidays. Thanksgiving is like that too. I go home a couple times around winter, but make a point to never do it over a holiday. Quite possibly because that would remind both me and my mother of the fact that my father's dead and we'd just cry a lot. Him dying on my birthday just really kinda ruined all holidays for us, to be honest.
(It is good to HAVE invitations to spend time with friends on these holidays. That keeps me from feeling like nobody loves me. But I'd really just rather sit in a quiet warm place and read or something and eat very little and not talk with a single person.)
Originally published at Egypt Urnash. You can comment here or there.