Well, my plan to write a post of gratitude for each day in November kind of bit the dust. I forgot the industry I work in and that spare time hits the fan in mid-November. Truthfully, I didn't think anyone was reading. Then a couple people asked what happened and why I wasn't writing. Thank you guys for noticing and for caring.
I felt compelled to write today because it's the week of Christmas and I'm in a terrible mood. This Christmas seems harder than most, maybe just because I'm in it, but in my current state it feels like the Christmases inside of a bar watching my mom wobble on a round stool or trying to figure out how to make a Christmas dinner for three kids with $36 in food stamps was a breeze. Why? Life is stabilizing and things are good.
I think I'll be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone. If so, that will be by choice- I was invited to Christmas by multiple people. My first thought was sitting in a room full of people who are family, and invading that space. When my family did have Christmas way back when, there was always an uncle or aunt who brought along a weird girlfriend or boyfriend we didn't know. Nobody spoke of the tension. You either buy that person an impersonal gift out of obligation because you don't know them, or they sit and watch you do an exchange with your family. The thought of being that person felt lonelier than taking care of the pile of laundry I still haven't hung up in my closet so I opted to do the latter.
The thought of Christmas seems extraordinarily lonely for some reason. Is it the idea that "since now life is fixed, why are holidays still so broken?" Is it working in a tense place where for weeks I have seen the behind-the-scenes stress of people preparing a holiday that looks perfect from the outside? Is it the approaching anniversary of being pinned down on a bed and told that nobody would believe me if I said what was happening to me? I can't say. Maybe it's everything. Maybe it's something else.
Somebody told me the old song-and-dance about how holidays are "just another day." I know this was to make me feel better. It pissed me off. Special days are important to me. It doesn't matter if I've been conditioned to think that or not. I've spent most birthdays and holidays alone and they're deeply meaningful to me to try to make good. I think people who say that special days don't matter either have always had the luxury of them being special, or it's a self-protective statement from someone who's perpetually felt a deep, aching aloneness where there should be a feeling of unity and belonging.
I got into this mode I get into. I'm alone, nobody cares, I don't matter, no one around me understands. And then for some reason, there was a voice of conviction.
A while back, I was talking to a friend who said, "Angela, how self-absorbed are you to think you're the only one like you?" Maybe it was just his echo in my mind. I was talking to him about feeling like my only options for a partner were a caring, boring person or a trainwreck with passion. I thought about the last year of my life, the people I met... Was I really the only person who knew aloneness? I certainly was not. And this year, I learned I am loved.
How self-absorbed and entitled am I to feel alone? How many people did I turn down in favor of being alone because the old tapes in my head told me I'm unworthy to join other people, that I would be invading some kind of a sacred space? What about my children? I see them tomorrow. Maybe not exactly the way I want, but how can I look at them and think that I am truly alone? They don't want the version of a mother that I thought I would be or that I promised myself I would be- they just want to know they matter and nobody can do that the way their mother can. I know because I had parents that gave up. They let go without a fight and that's what this feeling inside of me truly is. It's not the people around me. They're loving me. They're inviting and including me. They're proving themselves safe. As an adult I can now say that three important people in my life- my parents and the man I thought I would spend the rest of my life with- did not truly love me, did not protect me and did not fight for me- so what? That's three people. Three people with important roles, who didn't do their job, but in that, a sea of others flooded in with understanding and a love free of obligation. I never want my kids to have to make that choice or that realization with me, but I am grateful I can make it for myself since I can't change where I came from. They are three people that actually matter, and I won't let anyone who came before them allow me to forget that.
I'm thankful.
I'm thankful for the truth of who I am and the truth of the people around me. Memories sometimes get in the way. You apply traits to people who don't live in your world anymore. You give scars a name or try to shield yourself from new ones. It's not real. One day you reach a point where you can look someone in the eye and know that there is no sinister other side to them, and that is when you're very free. I have more people like this than I can count and I am so very grateful.
