T'is the Season

The Painful Path
Sadness that never really goes away

Space nothing can ever fill

Just cavernous empty you stuff with every

Good thing you can find

But never enough

Cling to the happy when the sad attacks

Put on a brave face, be as normal as you can

Sympathy lasts only so long

Understanding seldom prevails

Hurt and rage - your unhappy roommates

Face it every chance you get

Embrace sorrow so that it may pass

Be not tormented forever

When at last it finally drains away

It will be sunlight on your face

And everyday will be spring

Very few people know, but I used to be an avid poetry writer. Six of my poems were published by the International Library of Poetry, which I thought was a huge accomplishment at one time, until I read some of the drivel they accept. As far as I can tell they publish everything that comes to them in order to sell books, which I used to buy religiously if my work was in them. Honey suggested I write some for my blog. Sometimes poems are the best cohesion of jumbled emotions that have nowhere to go, as is the case with the one above. I wrote The Painful Path a year after my parents stopped speaking to me basically because I married Felix. One year to the day they broke contact, they sent me a video montage of taking care of them when they’re old because they took care of me when I was young, Things a happy family would be happy to receive because it strengthens their bond. Bare in mind, this is a day after I totaled another car and was supposed to leave for a bed-and-breakfast weekend in Zion for my wedding anniversary. I was home alone, completely confused and just fell apart. Honey penned an email asking them to get out of my life if they insisted on continually hurting me. The response said simply that I’d have to ask for that, and if I did they’d “gladly comply”, but he was not acknowledged as my husband or anyone of consequence. After 6 or 7 years of being torn to pieces trying to follow my heart and appease my parents demanding wishes, I was just exhausted and over it – in the sense that I just didn’t care anymore, didn’t have the energy to argue about it anymore, and wanted nothing more than to be at peace. I’m still not over it, per say. I had to pen an email to my folks telling them I loved them, but didn’t wish to have any more contact with them or from them. I blocked their email address. I cried for a long time. This time of year is the hardest for me, Thanksgiving and Christmas and the space in between, when they usually come to Vegas for NFR and to visit their friends. I graduated in 2006 and that year they didn’t bother to visit me while they were here. Those holidays messed with me the worst, I didn’t understand what was happening or why. Then the guilt-trip email following a battered body, totaled car, and nearly spoiled anniversary plans. Thanksgiving is better since last year; we made our own traditions and cooked dinner with family. Christmas is still a bitch though. I haven’t found a way around it, past it or even over or under. I enjoy the festivities with a sort of reserved sadness that I try not to inflict on others. We decorate with the lights outside and the tree, presents, and dinner…it’s just not the same. As it used to be my favorite holiday, I carry a certain amount of resentment for having that ruined for me. I’m working on it. Poetry helps. It’s the physical and mental outpouring of my inner turmoil boiling onto a page; the page traps it and some, if not all, of the destructive emotions drain away. Therapy comes in many forms – I prefer the ones that are free.

I didn’t write all this angst to inflict it on you good people; I just hope that the sharing of it will make it less of a burden on me. I’m so tired this time of year and there’s no escaping my own head. Ironically, I saw a clip from the Christmas Carol where Scrooge was saying that Christmas was a holiday for the buying of things for which there was neither need nor money, and found myself agreeing and even giggling. Financial straights do weird things like that to me. Here, we’ll be as merry as we can. I wish the same to all of you.

Merry Christmas.