midwinter musings
A couple cool things to announce before I launch into this week’s missive.
First off: My piece in Beyond Queer Words was finally published. Please buy a hard copy or digital if you can (to support the editors and organization.) I’m proud to see this one go to a good home after sifting through my archives. It was time to let it out to the world.
Second, I’m honoured that my piece from Vast Chasm was submitted to Best American Essays as one of their nominations! Huge thanks to Jen and Mike for their tireless editing on this piece. I know that it’s a shot in the dark but humbled to be in such great company.
Hey friends: This one was an easy one for me to write, but probably won’t be as fun to stomach. Some content and trigger warnings ahead for mental health issues, abuse (familial,) sickness and other things that involve trauma. You can skip this one if it’ll affect your mental health. But I hope you do read ahead, maybe you’ll find you’re in a similar place.
On a recent surgeon-mandated recovery walk, I confessed to my companion of my desire to remain in the liminality of the holiday season.
I feel weird because I want 2024 to end so badly. Hell of a year. But I also don’t want to face what’s coming up next year. I’m unprepared, I found myself saying as we trudged through the first hints of snow and sleet. Our umbrellas batting against the cold December winds filled the silence that fell between us after acknowledging what a shitshow it’s been. But I met you? I think to myself, recalling the amount of whirlwind exits and entrances into my sphere over the course of the year.
I barely made it to December alive, with bits of my sanity fraying and my nervous system shaken to its core. I’ve never embraced the holiday season with gusto, preferring to hibernate in the comfort and safety of my home— but I do miss the festivities. I miss the rampant chaos of stuffing three or four generations of offspring into a singular household and the creative ways my extended family attempted to cobble together new traditions (and failing spectacularly.)
One of the last years our extended family came together, before others started moving out of Hawaii because of the cost-of-living crisis, we gathered in my parents’ giant living-dining room combo. Around 30-40 of us from different generations, separated by sex and played a game of holiday charades. Ever the observer, I watched in a stoned daze as my cousin’s partner mimed— cupping his scrotum before grabbing two ends of an invisible stick and snapping it all the way in half. THE NUTCRACKER!, my brother shouted at the top of his lungs before jumping up and high-fiving his comrade. We hadn’t done that at previous parties, and we haven’t since my cousins moved. Perhaps another time, when everyone can gather. These are things I miss, despite the emotional drain on my capacity and energy.
For context, I grew up with a large, extended family, within half an hour’s drive . Even though my immediate family is small — just my parents, brother and myself — most my father’s family lived in Hawaii, too. They were on the other side of the island, but my parents made sure that I would grow up relying on them for things because, as my mom continues to state to this day, They’re family. We’re blood. We’ll be here for you when everyone else stops or can’t. You’ll see. We love you.
Just because love is abundant doesn’t mean that it’s the type of love I need. Holidays are often fraught for me, despite the lack of seasons in Hawaii, because of the emotional expenditure it requires managing the chaos. I spent most Christmas my freshman year of high school locking myself up in my room. Seasonal depression of the highest order, as we collectively processed my childhood yaya’s death. While my yaya and I didn’t always get along, she still helped raise me — often spending more time with me that either of my parents. (My father tells me, Your brother was nice to her. You and mom made her cry. That’s why she liked your brother more.) My mother took my locking the door as a front, as I locked myself in with my cell phone and laptop— access to the outside world. Our housekeeper unscrewed the windows of my room, climbed in to grab the only devices I had connecting me to the outside world, and then left. The only time I got up was to close the windows and shut and lock the door behind her. I didn’t give a shit about talking to others when I was grieving and depressed. (Not that either of my parents believe in mental illness through a pathological lens.) I was just a hormonally dazed teenager isolated in the middle of bumfuck with her abusive mom, silently complicit father and golden child brother. Every Christmas has the stink of that year linger. But, what are the highs of life if we can’t also experience the lowest of lows?
Holidays temper themselves with age and distance. In my 30’s, I live a country and ocean away from my immediate family, and an ocean away from my in-laws. No biological children, to my parents’ dismay, but two dogs that my spouse and I adore despite how annoying they can be. To make things fair, we’ve clocked the holidays in a rotation, normally spooling between the families, and now adding our own tiny family in the queue. I don’t mind the loneliness of the holiday season when it’s just my spouse, my dogs, and myself. To be honest, it’s perfect. I don’t have to mask or pretend to indulge in small talk because my husband knows me just as well as I know myself. We are enmeshed in a two-person familial unit, which I’ve come to terms with. We make our own traditions, and we’ve never been the ones to follow them anyway. (Example: Our three different wedding celebrations last year.)
I think I leave 2024 with less than I entered.
To be quite honest with you, I’m okay with that. It just means that we are not in season. We are no longer attuned to one another in meaningful ways. And that’s okay. At least, I’m convincing myself that it is. Some days are worse than others, of course, but after a sharp rupture — I feel content in taking things with more ease. I spent most of the year flying between all my options and exhausting myself before succumbing to my medical mysteries.
I feel my body settling into its season of rest, though I resist. The winter solstice, where we find ourselves with the shortest day of the year, reminds me I, too, need to fold to nature’s whims. For once, I’m comfortable in hibernation until the weather gets warmer. As always, friends, it’s been quite a year.
I’m trying to take things one day at a time. I exist in a holding pattern right now. And maybe you are too. At least we’re not alone. 💓
All my love and more,
C x