Thursday, December 27, 2007

The Ties that Bind
Current mood: tired
Category: Life
The Christmas season is always tough. I love getting ready for Christmas, beginning the day after Thanksgiving. The shopping, the keen awareness of Christ, the decorating, the baking, the Christmas cards, the music, all of it. I’m always stressed because I’m never where I want to be on my to do list, but I love it regardless.

Then it’s over. Christmas tree still up and lit, but empty underneath. Tree skirt disheveled, ornaments slowly finding their way to the floor. Garland falling off because I don’t care to fix it anymore since its job was finished the night of the 25th. No more cards flooding the mailbox, nativity set nudged here, moved there, no more candles burning, the smell of apple cider, cloves and cinammon long gone.

I feel like those forgotten and discarded decorations. I feel so out of place, as though I no longer belong in my life. Or anywhere. I’m not sure why, but I miss Dad more than I have in a very long time. I had to stop thinking about him years ago, about missing him, because my heart would hurt so deeply I could feel it in my gut. I would spend hours crying for what could have been and for what was and what was not. I feel so lonely, I feel displaced. I feel as though I have no foundation for who I am anymore. My parents just moved a few hours away; two years ago I would have bid them good riddance. Now, I just feel odd; sad, but in a different way than ever before.

Grandma Bunny is gone, and Grandpa has just remarried (after a very LONG dramatic few months), and has moved north with Mom and Vernon. Grandma Tweed died this year, nearly 3 years after Grandpa Tweed passed away. I feel as though I no longer have a heritage, that I am just here, alone. Dad has been gone now for nearly 15 years, which is all of my adult life. It breaks my heart that my kids never knew him.

Caedmon was asking me the other day if we were going to see her Grandma or my Grandma. I don’t have any grandmas anymore. That hurts. Deeply, for some reason. I’ve never been big on family, but now that most of them are dead and the rest are moved away, I feel the void. Family wasn’t something I could depend on just because they had the title. Friends have always been much more reliable; although we all know that can never be 100% either…

Currently listening:
Hearts of the Innocent
By Kutless
Release date: 21 March, 2006