Christmas is...

What Christmas, or rather the Christmas season, meant to me was family. My mom came from a family with four siblings each of whom had two children, with the exception of one, who adopted three. On holidays, we always all got together at my grandma's house for more food than was reasonable, playtime with cousins, and later with cousins' kids, and, while my grandmother was alive, music.  I have vivid, beautiful memories of warm houses and Christmas lights and laughter.

Then my grandma passed away and the awful shit that sometimes happens with families over relatives' estates happens, effectively splitting the larger group in half. Which honestly was fine - holiday celebrations got streamlined, but those who were leftover were still close. We still gathered on holidays, and I always still felt an extreme sense of appreciation for these people that I love. 

So in recent years, I've still kept coming home for a few weeks, and we've cooked a lot with more butter than one should probably ever use in a meal, and we've still gathered and laughed. And everything still felt like home.

This year is different. This year, to be perfectly honest, I feel nothing. 

It's mostly me. In this past year I have felt more distant from the people in my life than ever before. I can't tell you why that is. Possibly it started more than a year ago, when I started distancing myself from my partner of six years. It wasn't really sustainable. We both knew it. So probably to make it easier for myself emotionally, I started putting up walls. When the break finally came it still hurt, but I was able to not think about it most of the time, since I'd already started not thinking about our relationship most of the time. Unfortunately, he was my best friend, the person I told everything to. I still felt like I had close friends though, and even though they were slowly going their separate ways, mostly with their partners, I still felt like there was a good enough support system to call on when I needed it. 

The problem, I guess, is that I decided I was really self sufficient. And I am. I try to take care of myself and my dog and not bother anyone too much. I work really hard, and I have a lot of things I'm interested in that keep me busy. I go on dates and make the rounds with friends. But I don't spend a lot of time with anyone. So I guess really I've started to feel disconnected from everything. I always thought I felt close to my parents, though.

But they've been having a lot of problems lately. More and more it seems like they can't stand one another for a a multitude of reasons I won't even begin to explain. Unfortunately I don't feel like I have much to contribute in terms of making things better. If I dare to disagree with my mother, I've taken sides with my father, and to a lesser extent it works in the other direction too. So I mostly just try to listen hoping that talking out loud will get them through it. It hasn't though, and when I'm home now, all I hear constantly around me is fighting, and all I feel is tension. And then when I've had enough and ask if everyone can please just shut up, that makes no one talk to anyone.

So I just shut myself away, and sit with the dogs, and do little things to keep myself busy. It's Christmas eve and I've barely spoken three words to anyone today. I used to spend all day in the kitchen helping my mom and joking with her. She doesn't want to be in the same room with anyone. Instead, I've sat with my laptop and caught up on email and contemplated getting a jump start on some work I have to do this week, because I don't have anything better to do. 

I wish I could feel that warmth and sense of belonging I felt before. I wish I felt anything. Instead, I just feel empty. It feels like any other day. 

Seriously

On days like this - gray, raining, chilly, hungover days - all I want in the world is someone to share it with. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing the bright summer days too - but on those days I feel more a part of the world than apart from the world, like I do on the dreary ones.

I wish there was someone out there who wanted to go look at taxidermy mouse dioramas with me at the Morbid Anatomy Holiday Fair, then stumble around downtown Brooklyn a little, then maybe sit and start watching True Blood with me.

Driving in the Dark

We only live forever in the lights we make
When we were young we used to say
That you only hear the music when your heart begins to break
Now we are the kids from yesterday.

All I want is a long, aimless drive on dark, nearly deserted streets, blasting my car stereo, so I can sing as loudly as I want until the music replaces the vague longing I feel for something I can't put my finger on with something else that feels a bit more complete. There are no dark, nearly deserted roads in New York City where I can drive 70 miles an hour, few streets that wouldn't require me to stop every few blocks for a red light.

I experienced a brief moment of the pure joy that comes with accelerating unimpeded to 55, 60, 65 miles per hour and beyond accompanied by music and my own out-of-shape voice tonight while driving back home from downtown Brooklyn along the BQE, and I just wanted it to go on forever. For a minute I got to relive countless moments with friends, boyfriends, my brother, moments where we drove and sang and talked together and felt free and alive, moments I thought were in infinite supply, but which turned out ultimately to be limited.

When I almost ran into a parked service truck on my exit ramp, I got an intense flashback of deja vu from when I did the exact same thing in the exact same place seven years ago, when I'd just moved to Brooklyn, when even the cold felt new and exciting, when the sense of endless possibility was ever-present. For a second, everything still felt possible. For just a second, I didn't mind that it was winter. I thought that maybe if I could keep driving, I could make that all stick, but the first traffic light brought the reality of city driving back, so I came home, and instead tried to bring my memories in with me.

I miss you, nearly pitch-black, two-lane back roads of rural Georgia. I miss you all, my shotgun co-pilots, who'd also shamelessly belt along to ridiculously emo songs or rock opera or hair metal or musical theater until we'd sung ourselves hoarse, then who'd accompany me home to lie on the floor and talk about whatever it was that was so important until the wee hours of the night. There was really almost nothing better than us, my car, and a long night ahead.

Dinner Drivel

(Note: I'm currently discovering old drafts I never published, and just pressing publish if they aren't entirely incomplete.)

Some people are really impressed by certain evidences of achievement--by masters degrees or doctorates, by the names of the schools that others attended, by their employment histories with high-profile companies. Others really enjoy sharing their achievements, sliding them into small talk--or even dominating entire conversations with their impressive scholastic and business accomplishments--as if this somehow affirms that you chose the right dinner partner indeed.

There are some people who really take note of these mentions, who are impressed by them, and who like to surround themselves with people who have perhaps been to Ivy-league schools, who have MBAs, who summer at their homes in the north and winter in their second homes in the south, and who drive their brand new cars in between the two, who know exactly how many square feet each of these homes have.

I personally don't give a shit.

Where you went to school and what company provides you with a desk and a paycheck and how many quality possessions you own--none of these things make me care any more or any less about you, because they don't really tell me anything about who you are. What I want to know are things like what do you really care about--what lights up your eyes and makes you raise your voice with passion? What have you done to make a difference, either in the larger world or in just one life? What makes you different from every other person in this restaurant, on the street, in the subway? I suppose for some, the answers to these questions are the things mentioned in the first sentence of this paragraph. I find dinner conversations with this type of person insufferable. All I want to do is to tell them to shut up, to point out that because they were so busy talking about themselves, they haven't asked a single question of anyone else, as if they presume they have nothing to learn from anyone else.

I want to have dinner with the genuine people, the people you can skip quickly through the small talk and get into real conversations about the things that really keep us up at night, like what we're going to do to make a contribution to the world, like what kind of people we're going to be when we're older, like what kind of people we're going to share our lives with and how we're going maintain these relationships, because we know that none of us is perfect, and that everything has the potential to fall apart if we don't work hard at the important things.

Remember when...

Music and autumn are the ultimate catalysts for nostalgia.

Music brings your youth back in floods. There are those songs that you used to play over and over again, so much so that you know every single note, every last exhalation and subtle finger scratch on guitar strings. They were so important to you, because at the time you had discovered an accurate articulation of what was swirling around inside of you. You don't play them often anymore, because they no longer necessarily appropriately reflect your daily inner soundtrack, but when they come on unannounced, everything, every single little detail comes flooding back and you feel, momentarily, exactly the same as you felt five, ten, twenty or more years ago.

The difference that is so striking to me is the difference between how much we felt then and how much we allow ourselves to feel now.

Remember how young we were? Remember how old we felt?

Your first love was so unadulterated in its intensity that you swore that no one could have ever loved anyone like this before. And then when he broke your heart, you felt like you would die, because no one could possibly survive such pain. Remember how much it hurt? Do you remember how it took over everything, every last part of your day-- how you couldn't get away from it, how acute the experience was? Now as adults we've experienced loss so well beyond the scope of what we understood then, but we don't get to let that pain out. Instead we silently hold it close to our hearts and really push it aside as much as we can so that we can put on a good face for the world. We no longer get to embrace and express our pain.

(Note: Nov 2012: I don't remember when I wrote this. I know there was more. I know it involved the smell of autumn.)

A Facebook message I almost sent

I don't know who gets these messages, but...

Matt, I don't know what to do about the fact that your sisters, the tiny girls who used to follow us around on the beach, now have children. I wish you were around for me to lament about the passing of our youths. Instead, I have the knowledge that you're not there. Except...a lot of the time you still are. I go home, and I see you around the turns on 144. I hear you singing along to Oasis in the car. We hang out in my dreams, and I don't miss you then, because we get to spend some time together. But in my waking hours, and in these weird dark hours where I should probably just go to bed, I miss...I miss you. I miss our past. I miss your future. I want to know what happens. 

I fucking hate the shit life deals us sometimes.

Love,

Rebecca

Last night

It was one of those nights.

"I really want to kiss you right now."

Fuck. It was one of those nights I haven't had since college, I think. Sitting with a friend, having a good conversation, and suddenly, this confession. Blame it on the alcohol -- it's fine when we do that. It's not as awkward later.

The problem is, that in college, this shit happened. Sometimes there were drunk confessions from guys I thought were just close friends. But now I'm at the point in my life where this hasn't happened in forever. I thought it was a thing of the past. I'm too old. Friends are friends. I no longer inspire these feelings of passion that were once (dare I say?) almost commonplace.

But here it is, in this bar, from a dear, close friend. 

All I can say is "No." All I can think is "You're engaged." Goddamnit. 

And then my feelings. My fucking feelings are all over the place. Because part of me wants to kiss him anyway. Part of me agrees with him. If it hadn't been a matter of geography, we might be together. We might be the ones getting married and working on dual citizenships and an international relationship.

Part of me hates myself. Hates everything. Because it's still too soon after the last relationship, the one I thought I could will to last.

Part of me feels hopeful. Maybe I'm not past my prime after all.

And part of me just feels sad. Like I should just go to bed.