the most wonderful time of the year
I have never been much of a Christmas person. We do the customary dinner and gift exchange, but the traditions have dwindled over the years. No one really comes to visit. We don't do a Christmas tree anymore because the fear of inviting a fire into our home for the second time is too great. But we do Christmas, and we do it together, the three of us. This year was a modest Christmas for tight times but as heartfelt as any. This year's damned 'White Christmas' fantasy came true, leaving everyone slightly grumpy and house bound. This morning I woke up feeling shitty again. Since getting sick well over a month ago, I have yet to get better. I'm never really fully out of commission but always a little bit unwell, and today is a bad day. I am too tired to get up and my throat feels like it's full of acid or razor blades. I am feeling awful about how I've let my body and health go over the first term of school, so I am running on the treadmill every day and doing this 'vegetable' thing in hopes of being able to stand up straight and proud by New Years. I am booking physiotherapy, optometrists, filling prescriptions. I will make my body better.
New York was a bittersweet experience. I spent time with people I care very much about and saw some incredible art, theatre, and music. I saw things I'd never seen before and walked streets with stories that hummed with an energy I'd never felt before. But I spend most of my trip desperate to please and appease the people I was traveling with, obsessing over what I should have shrugged off and looking to those around me when I should have been looking up and ahead. We were in a piano bar when someone said something about how they were having an awful time, and all I could think about was how that might be my fault. I got up, stumbled out the door and onto the snowy sidewalk of the East Village and began to cry. I walked past the gay bars and drag queens, past the taxi cabs and subway station, and cried. I couldn't take 11 days to live my life carefree and happy. I try hard, so hard, to be happy and to make those around me happy. But one cannot be responsible for that. If I am surrounded by disappointment and unhappiness, I must accept that I can only secure my own happiness. I can only help those who want to be helped. I wiped my tears off my face, now flaked in little crystals on my cheeks, and walked back into the bar.
New York was a bittersweet experience. I spent time with people I care very much about and saw some incredible art, theatre, and music. I saw things I'd never seen before and walked streets with stories that hummed with an energy I'd never felt before. But I spend most of my trip desperate to please and appease the people I was traveling with, obsessing over what I should have shrugged off and looking to those around me when I should have been looking up and ahead. We were in a piano bar when someone said something about how they were having an awful time, and all I could think about was how that might be my fault. I got up, stumbled out the door and onto the snowy sidewalk of the East Village and began to cry. I walked past the gay bars and drag queens, past the taxi cabs and subway station, and cried. I couldn't take 11 days to live my life carefree and happy. I try hard, so hard, to be happy and to make those around me happy. But one cannot be responsible for that. If I am surrounded by disappointment and unhappiness, I must accept that I can only secure my own happiness. I can only help those who want to be helped. I wiped my tears off my face, now flaked in little crystals on my cheeks, and walked back into the bar.