such bright and shiny not natural things glowing and wriggling in the slightest of breeze as passersby brush the air with their scratchy cloaks and baggage. It is the Christmas season and the stores are crammed with parents and loved ones worried they will appear as epic failures in the eyes of the recipients of the merchandise so sought after. I admire them from a distance, but I will say this to you. I have felt that sinking pang of insecurity, of being afraid my child will think less of me. For years I put together the holidays for everyone. Making fudge and cookies and brickle (brittle to some of you) and candied nuts. I wrapped coffee tins in festive paper and clear shelf liner, then filled them with edible treasure.
It started as an economic thing really. And I had never drank coffee until long after those days! I miss those foolish times when I would wrap our wall pictures as presents and hang garland (the old retired stuff as we bought or inherited new every other year) and silk poinsettias from the windows. Every year I would add the well wishes and cards to the miles of red ribbon and tack them to where the ceiling meets the wall. They would stretch around the living room and down the doorways and even into the hallway. By now I imagine they would circle the perimeter of every room and doorway and then some. I still add what few cards I get to the box and ribbon(ed) ones; I just haven't hung them in ages.
You see I don't much celebrate or decorate anymore. Sure, when I can I put up a tree, but not the train set or the skating pond. I don't make goodies or wrap aluminium cans or go house hunting for light displays. The significance is lost. I give year round and love year round. The days of adopting a neglected family to bestow good tidings upon are lost too. Now I am the neglected family. My kid and I, by the world and the people and worst of all, ourselves. Why, we aren't even Christians, but don't fret, not without faith either. I love my family. Really. But I can't live with them. I know this and I can't live with too many others either. I have lost my sense of belonging in my quest for answers. I wanted those answers and I wanted the story...and I wanted it to cure everything that I saw wrong with my life. Two outta three ain't bad, is it?
What was I thinking? Cure everything? Like I'm some "maladeous" cretin? Knowing your sick doesn't cure a damn thing. I doesn't pay the outstanding bills or wrap the gifts or even put a smile on someone's face (unless they wish you ill will and that is just awful and...yes, happens to me quite frequently!). I was sick when I did those things. I was sick when I was born. Knowing made me stop and filled me with even more loathing for the family that bore me and the earth that refuses to make room for me. I am a blister on this soil. And I have been lost since long before my quest for answers and now realize all that time wasted didn't change anything for the better in me. It only gave my child another chance or break that I didn't get. For that I am thankful, that and the answers themselves. The point is obviously right in front of my face. I can't go back in time and be twenty-one and invincible again, or so I thought. Now I can't find a holiday heart on the road I have been traveling. But, there is a way, there's got to be, to get that fight back in me and derail this desolate path. There's a reason there is no one on these tracks.
I often think of things and relive the past in some macabre fashion during prescribed holidays. I can't help my self nor do I want to. So where does a mobe go in this infinite world of disdain? How do I carve a new niche out of what shambles I have? Today I will cook dinner and open our gifts (they aren't wrapped) and try to gather a smile for Lobo's sake and make something out of nothing and put aside my fears and worry over financial matters. Tomorrow I will ponder the path I am changing and decide what new roads lie ahead that await me. I suggest you all do the same and love who you're with. Embrace them and be thankful you have just one person who matters to you as I do. Let your friends know you care and let your family know you love them even if you don't much like them. Forgive, this is hard for me, terribly hard. But it is my "to do" list for the New Year that lies waiting for me.~mobe's love to her all and her all to her loves.
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