People are different in December. The collective rush to buy gifts, coupled with shortening hours of daylight, creates a general air of unpleasantness.
I am unpleasant in December. At least, I am unpleasant this December. I’ve been having too much caffeine and forgetting to pack lunches for work. I’ve been on edge and the smallest things make me grumpy. I find it difficult to give others the benefit of the doubt.
Right now, kindnesses are a shock of warmth. Having a silly conversation with a child is a relief. It is easy to lose sight of the big picture. Nothing seems to exist past the 25th, when I will have three glorious days off from work to go home and see my family. In the meantime, I’m making winter playlists half-full of songs I can’t manage to listen to without sinking. I’m imagining myself into the role of a bookshop nymph. I’m putting all my leftover energy into celebrating the solstice, because, as an open-ended atheist, the earth tilting is truly more meaningful to me than Christmas.
That being said, I am so excited for Christmas. Why does it feel like time travel? Everyone has memories of Christmas pasts. Sit next to a Christmas tree, instantly immortalize yourself. Is it a trick of the light? I’ll have you know that I’ve orchestrated a Secret Santa at work and agreed (enthusiastically!) to help with a Christmas Tea. And I’m reading The Night Circus, a book that easily melds the festive with the romantic.
The other day I read tarot cards with my cousin/best friend and thought about how to be a writer. We are extremely beginner-level tarot readers and kind of had no idea what we were doing, but we tried. My cards reminded me to not remain complacent. They told me to speak from a truthful place. I don’t really know how to do that besides saying how I feel, and feeling how I feel. And if December is a difficult time, then so be it. I will feel it and it will pass. I will inhabit it until the days grow full again.
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