December is always hard, Christmas, winter. Seasonal affective disorder, a curse, mental illness. Whatever you want to call it. My life just tends to take a turn for the worse this time of year. More and more I've been wondering if that's my fault. Maybe I'm not trying hard enough, maybe I don't want to enjoy christmas, so I don't. Maybe I'm okay with that. Lately I've been thinking hard about holidays, what's the point? You might say to celebrate, and I'll ask you. Why do you need an excuse to celebrate. Look around, you're alive, still! Celebrate everything. Celebrate life outside of the existing excuses. Because Holidays have rules. You have to do this or that or you're doing it wrong, furthermore, they have origins. Origins that Aren't cool. Thanksgiving is an Easy example. Woohoo! lets go genocide!! Christmas isn't any better though. It's just another thing Christians stole from Pagans in an attempt to spread their toxic beliefs further. Look where that got us. Fucking Theocracy. Lovely, thank you. Fourth of July celebrates the time we lied to a bunch of slaves and promised them freedom if they help us overthrow the brits. And then we proceeded to not. For A while. Easter? Christians didn't like that the spring equinox celebrated fertility (which meant people went fuck crazy) So they made it about the death of jesus. Awesome. Fuck it, I'm done participating in an arbitrary system of holidays that force me to consume in order to please others. It's stupid. I'll celebrate the solstices now. Nature gives us plenty to celebrate. I'll celebrate life now, and companionship, and personal goals and achievements, and reunions and living and loving! Maybe then the season wont feel so hollow.
I think I ought to be better at forgiving myself for past mistakes. I dwell on the things I've done a lot, and staying stuck like that limits how well I'm able to grow and accept the person I'm becoming. Everyone is allowed mistakes, Everyone fucks up sometimes. I'm still so young, the mistakes I made as a child don't make me who I am today, rather what I learned from them does. It's weird to refer to oneself as a child in the past, in all honesty I don't feel any different today than then. Just sadder, and more tired. So listen up, if you're reading this it's your sign to forgive yourself and move on. Address what you did, you fucked up, it happens. Accept it, ask yourself what you've learned and internalize that, and move on. Let go, leave it behind. Sometimes you fuck up real bad, and it takes work to achieve forgiveness. No time better than now to get started. You dug this hole, start climbing, and fill it in. Bury the hatchet as they say, and grow. I give you permission to move on from your mistakes, and I accept you as who you are today, and not who you were many years ago. I hope you do the same to me. I hope that everyone does that. I know they don't, I know because I don't. Sometimes people hurt you, and you can't forgive them. That also happens, and it's okay. If they won't forgive you then you have to accept that, and leave them alone. Whether it's something you wont do, or something you can't do, or maybe they don't want anything and they just hate you. If you really tried and apologized and you showed true humility and vulnerability and they just can't do it, leave it. Move on. You tried, don't dwell on it too hard. Everyone is constantly learning how to be better everyday, but you can't if you're stuck living in the past because in the 3rd grade you did some embarrassing and mildly problematic stuff. Forgiveness is tricky like that, it's so subjective. Everyone experiences it differently. I hope that I'll grow to be the kind of person who can forgive anyone. Infinite 2nd chances and It's okay I still love you's. I'm just not there yet.
I've got a lot of growing to do before I make it there. I'm impulsive, and rash, overly emotional and reactive. I can be horrible. I can be hard to read and confusing, unwelcoming, cold, mean even. Even though all of this is true, I still have so much love in my heart for everybody. With every passing day I have less and less patience for that angry voice in my mind that controls my impulses. Some day I'll work up the nerve to really stand up and say I won't do it anymore! I'll be kind and genuine, not just sometimes, All the time. Even when I'm angry, or sad, or scared. I'll be welcoming and comforting to everyone, not just those close to me. I'll be open and honest. It's funny because these are all true things about me, they just get muddled in the confusion of life sometimes. I'm not always the best at communicating either, that's always been hard for me. For whatever reason I can do it here. I feel comfortable ripping my heart out and exposing it to anyone who reads this because I'm typing it up, but if I had to verbalize some of the things that come out here... I'd cry. I cry a lot. I get overwhelmed way too easily. I cry happy tears, I cry sad ones, angry ones, I cry over the dumbest things sometimes. But crying is good right? Everyone tells me it's okay to feel my emotions. Good even, but when I do suddenly I'm unreasonable and a crybaby. I fucking hate that word. Cry baby. Of course babies cry you fucking idiot, who could blame them, and how can you blame me? I'm no better, just wiser. I know I can stop crying, because this too will pass. But why do I lash out like that? Is it fear? It can't be anger, I know I don't have that kind of anger in my heart. Jealousy maybe, I have issues with that a bit. I wish I could speedrun the anger bit and get straight to moving on. I've done it before. It's wild when it happens, I skip all the reactionary emotions and jump straight to "oh well, okay." That can't be good right? All of it is so confusing but I guess I don't need to have the answers now. For right now, looking for the answers is enough, because before I was digging the hole deeper and deeper. Now at least climbing out has gotten easier, although I do experience setbacks.
My dad called me on thanksgiving, it was the first time I've heard is voice in months. I don't know why I answered, immediately my throat closed up and I was filled with this horrible fucking feeling. A feeling I hadn't felt in a while. A feeling I was comfortable with leaving in the past. I stuttered through a few sentences. I don't know what he wanted, I don't care. I used the excuse that I was driving at the time. He hung up, I don't know. I don't know why he calls. What could he possibly fucking want from me. I just want to leave him behind. He's so far away I never have to see him again but he haunts me in ways even I can't fully comprehend. It's a suffocating feeling, I hate it. Why does he call. Why don't I block him or tell him off or something. I've stood up to him before, now that I don't see him all the time it's gotten harder. Maybe I've gotten soft. Lowered my guard, allowed myself weakness. I know better than to do that. He always finds a way to creep back in like a disgusting black sludge that won't let go of you. Like tar. Like Oil. I know the same fear that lives in my heart, also lives in his. He knows he will die alone, and he knows it's what he deserves, or at least I like to think deep down he does. Probably not, he's never been able to admit his own faults, and the one time he did I laughed in his face. What did he want, sympathy? That there's a 2 way street fuckass. Still it bothers me. I haven't been able to sleep as well since then, I spiraled a little bit, got super emotional and angry. Started lashing out at people and jumping to conclusions. All that, from a phone call. One stupid shitty phone call. Just being on the phone with him makes my skin crawl. He never called back. I guess it wasn't important. Why won't he leave me alone? Can't he see? I can't make it any more clear. Will I ever truly escape? Or will he loom over me, a horrible shadow that I will forever live in? Fuck that. I refuse. He can take his phone call and fucking eat it. He took so much for me, he's why I can never believe in myself. He never did, why should I? He's why I can't ever be genuine or vulnerable with others. Because he punishes that behaviour. I blame him for a lot but, what's a child without a father supposed to do? He wasn't fucking there for me, I don't have to answer his calls. He refuses to accept that times have changed. He's horrible, everything he taught me was horseshit, and half of it was racist or sexist. He's the first person that ever called me a slur, he's the first person to ever hit me, he's the first person who called me a dumbass. Could you imagine calling your 11 year old child a dumbass to their face? When they are trying their hardest and doing everything they could to make you happy? What the fuck? I'm dreading christmas more than usual this year, because I know he's going to call me again. I think I'm going to answer. And I'm gonna fucking tell him. Everything. Everything on my heart and my mind. Maybe then he'll stop calling, maybe I'll have to threaten him first. He is a coward afterall, scared of his own children all because he was never able to control them. What a fucking loser.
Well, that was a lot of dad stuff huh. Sorry.
I think I will list some things I love now.
I love alligators, and I love choly. I love my mom, I love my friends. I love tangerine tea, and jasmine too. I love ska music, and I love my job. I love the crisp winter air and the stinging cold of the wind. I love you too.
The song of the week is Greet Debt by Grey Matter