Missed Christmas

I missed Christmas last year.

Now, the official story goes that I was on a big and grand adventure. That story isn’t untrue. On Christmas day, I was surrounded by beach and pastel homes and mid-summer like air. There were no snowflakes, like home. I was with a new family- lucky to be taken in, vulnerable to that dangerous feeling in which desperation for home warped me into a shakiness that would love anything.

I got wooden earrings; the spirals hung like wind chimes.

I missed my last Christmas at home. After 10 years of living in my home- suburban, tan, special in no particular way- my parents were selling the house. When I left for Bolivia in August, I remember saying goodbye to my father was the hardest part. My soft spot for him always loosens me in waves. When I said goodbye to him, I held back tears by daydreaming of our last Christmas in our house. I superimposed that picture of happiness over the lump in my throat.

I got to Bolivia, and I got really sad.

I think I was sad before, but the way the permanence of it all seeped into every atom, so that I always was walking on falling tears, left me dizzy. Disorientation and misdirection manifested “angers and jagged edges that [were], perhaps, protests against a growing lightness of being” (Will). So, I stayed, knowingly giving up my last Christmas and my special little corner of the Universe.

On Christmas, I got wooden earrings; the spirals hung like wind chimes. 

Technology broke my isolation a bit. There Christmas day was, huddled in between snowflakes and an iPhone screen. The day was so close it could have whispered in my ear, nuzzled in collarbone. My sadness draped me at the nape of my neck. Sadness like that (sadness that is not just momentary, fleeting) alters your direction. All of a sudden, your memories are always with you. And I know “it is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter”, but those memories misguided me (Will). When sadness infiltrates your memories, the present becomes a vast chasm between you and your loved ones. When it rests at the nape of your neck, you don’t want to be seen in all your ugliness- you want ecstasy and fearlessness and elation. To be seen by your loved ones when sadness is around your neck is to be rendered imperfect.

I put the iPhone screen between me and that day. I put an unsure smile between me and the rest of the world.

On Christmas, I got wooden earrings; the spirals hung like wind chimes. I went home soon after. I missed Christmas day, but I went home soon after. Sadness was still faintly there but it grew to be complimentary to my being, my foreverness (“as foreverness is allotted to us” (Will)).

With wind chimes on my ears, sadness eventually said:

I want to know if you can see beauty even when it’s not pretty, every day,

and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure,

yours and mine, and

still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”

“The Invitation”

by Oriah Mountain Dreamer