the final hurdle

In retail, we spend essentially a third of our year gearing up for the holiday shopping season.  Planning, strategizing, implementing, and then really just holding on and riding it out once December hits.  This is my 14th holiday season in retail so it's really not new to me.  This year was going to be a little different from the last, like... maybe six years.  Because I'm running my own store?  Well yes, technically.  Also because of a break up that I'm so tired of writing about but still finding lessons within.  So if it's the most wonderful time of year and 'tis the season to be merry, why do I find myself looking so much into the past?

The overpriced 2017 tree.

The holiday season largely has been a marathon for me.  I started listening to Christmas music the instant Halloween was over, putting the spooky decorations away while bopping around the house in a festive mood and feeling a little bit lighter in my stride.  After all, I made it through the first of the three big holidays, the other two should be a breeze!  I decorated with garland and berries and faux snow, the cute and delightful things I've collected from Pottery Barn bringing a certain nostalgia to life in the house.  I've had a lot of my decorations for coming up on ten years now so to open the green and red totes and pull them out, it reminds me of how I felt in my childhood when it was time to decorate (much like with Halloween when mom would get the boxes down from the attic so I could rummage through them, assigning memories as I went).  As a child I'd place the carol singing teddy bear on a sofa, paying attention to the fast his little Santa hat was starting to tear off.  The red wood berry garland that eventually became my own but that I liked to whip around because it sounded cool.  A green paper tree with sequins glued to it that my sister made and seemed to survive every year.  And of course the buckets of ornaments that were collected over a lifetime.

While not everything I own stretches back that far, it's this time of year in general that brings me back to the past.

Anyway, you're probably still wondering how life has been a marathon.

I think it's been one due to the fact I've been solely focused on the time zipping by so I can go home and see my family.  Solely focused, in a strange way.  I posted a lot on social media last holiday season, and the one before (and the one before) because I was happy and in love and wanted to show it off.  In a moment of self-preservation this summer and with the foresight intention of sparing myself the gut rushes that could come with seeing those posts, I deleted the visual reminders of who that love was with.  Status updates and gingerbread house competitions and tree-cutting excursions stille exist, as it were, and they seem to pop up with reckless abandon like little slaps in the face.  For the most part I can shoulder them off and that's good.

Maybe part of me is just convinced that this year when I go home and see my friends and family, I'll finally realize that I'm okay?  That I've been okay, and that I'm going to still be okay?  Some days don't really feel like that... but there are even less and less days now than there were a month ago where I could cry on cue if you asked me to.  The proof's in the pudding and when you add up the sum of my parts: I'm okay.

That ability to cry on cue however is not due to an overriding feeling of loneliness by any means, it's just my life in general right now.  Concern over my financial situation, said loneliness, stress at work, stress of the holidays, and trying to come across all the while as strong.  This is my reality now and it was so much easier to deal with when I had someone at my side, but I don't anymore and that's okay.  Just one more thing for me to figure out, and I will in due time.

This past week I was sick for several days and that was rough.  Why is it that being sick as an adult, living alone, with no friends or family nearby is just the worst thing ever?  On Tuesday I sat motionless on my coffee table, sitting straight backed and rigid, with a fever of 102.4.  Laying down made me feel worse, reclining was just awful, so I sat up for an hour and a half and just let my brain cook away in my skull.  No TV or music, just silence.  Save for the cats, of course, purring beside me because they never stop and I wouldn't make them if I even could.  I took two and a half days off from work to just be sick and let myself get better and it granted me the time to think and process the past and the holiday season and all that hoo-ha.

I wrote a long time ago about a quote I had read once and it held a lot of meaning for me.  "Don't look back, you're not going that way."  For some reason I've always been the kind of person to keep an eye on the past.  Not because I fear it crawling up and biting me in the ass, but I think because I am always looking for reason and meaning to learn another lesson.  We go through things in life all the time, what better than to grow and adapt from said things?  Sometimes we don't know what there is to learn when we're in it... we don't know where to look and/or what we should even be looking for.

I look back at the winter seasons I've spent in relationships and I can't help but think on what it was each person brought to the table that I miss the most, and is it something I really still yearn for?  Christmas' past, or really the "ex's" of Christmas' past, all had unique qualities and traits that stand out.  It was Peter in 2004, with his homemade Christmas card filled with handwriting so beautiful and perfectly concise and a prose that waxed nostalgia so sweetly that I've kept it for 13 years now.  It was Ken and his giddy excitement to watch The Grinch and eat candy canes and decorate everything with brightly colored lights and do all of the things that make Christmas what it is to the masses.  It was Johnny and his heartfelt and deliberate effort to make the holiday stand out for me in such a cool, calculated and particular way that I still miss him and feel a dose of regret for how it ended.

And of course it's Derek... but for what he brought to the table, I'm not sure.  He was mostly just there, going along with whatever I wanted to do.  Maybe his contribution will come to me in time, though something tells me it won't.

That's why I keep an eye on the past.

Christmas for me is similar to my "okay" feeling about life right now; Christmas is made up of the sum of its parts.  It's hot chocolate on cold days, a freshly cut tree lighting the living room, and lights in the bushes outside.  It's the movies I watch every year, the music I listen to for two months on end, and it's picking a theme for my wrapping paper.  Christmas is seeing my friends and my family, it's hugging them and laughing and sharing stories of the year, and ultimately it's about taking a few minutes alone at the end of that day, every year, to think about what I'm grateful for.

Maybe next year I won't be spending so much time alone.  Maybe I'll have met someone that introduces me to their own traditions, that teaches me something about the season I've not yet experienced, and that opens my eyes to a wider world.  I can't explain to you what it feels like to have hope in my heart again, as I feel saying "it's good" is an understatement.  But I do have hope, and over the last few months I feel like I've continued to shed weight from my shoulders with each passing day.  I'll make it through Christmas just fine and then that's really it for the year.  The "firsts" are over and I can greet 2018 with a middle finger and get on with my life.  That's how I do things lately, anyway.

For now I'm going to wrap this up in a big bow, continue to pack my suitcase for a long weekend in Wisconsin, and listen to some tunes that I won't bring back around for another 10 months.  Darlene Love sang it best, and it's to her that I say ciao for now.

Cuz I remember when you were here, and all the fun we had last year.