Grinched…
I’m not exactly vowing to get vengeance against everyone celebrating their happy holiday butts off but despite the myriad of shiny lights I’ve put up and the carefully thought out gifts I’ve purchased I kind of just want to crawl into bed and stay there until New Year’s.
Some of that is because it’s cold and wintery and my body gets extra hurty when it’s cold and wintery.
Some of that is because my kids are with their dad this year until tomorrow so it won’t feel like a holiday until they get here. However some of it might be the fact that they are older.
No one is excitedly looking for me to put dinosaurs in strange situations throughout the holiday month. No one needed me to take them holiday shopping. There were no long days driving around for the perfect gift, sipping Starbucks and discussing what their Dad would like or what to get their friends.
There are no footy-jammied legs getting too excited and needing to be hauled upstairs for a nap or snuck a stocking stuffer in advance. No gingerbread houses, no Christmas cookies.
There’s only me, putting up the lights, picking out the gifts, wrapping the boxes, sticking them under the tree.
So I feel a little like the Grinch this year. It all seems a bit lackluster.
Everywhere I turn, fire.
It just feels as though every day I am surrounded by red hot pokers.
People I love are struggling. Thinking about the reasons for the their struggles makes me scramble back to distraction or anything else because otherwise I want to cry because someone is sick or because their choices are making them sick or because their mental health is really bad and there isn’t anything I can do to help.
People I love are hating. They are choosing to be mean and hateful and go out of their way to hurt people they don’t even know for reasons I can’t understand.
My country is fading. The heroic Captain America U.S. I grew up with is looking more and more like something Indiana Jones would fight against. Something the Avengers would defeat. Something we used to stand against.
Everywhere I turn there are burning, searing, painful places screaming for me to deal with them. All I can do is cower in the center of the flames.