When's January 3rd?

I used to love twinkle lights. Maybe it was just a few years ago or maybe not since when I was a kid. I always loved that they used to appear out of nowhere, suddenly right after Thanksgiving, around the time that mittens and hats came out. Though filled with wet snow and gray skies, the city streets would still be splashed with color during the cold weeks before Christmas. I would look at the lights, whether they outlined a doorway or blanketed a tree, and feel warmth and comfort. I’d be filled with the same inner ease that comes from the first sip of coffee in the morning. The floor of my stomach would feel full.

And as I got older I started to hype up my birthday more and more more. Adding pressure on friends to attend because it was my special day. I never really knew why I valued those days surrounding my birthday so much until now...

Gifts weren’t necessary but I just needed all the warm bodies around me as possible. December 1st would arrive and weeks of planning would become fulfilled. I’d feel loved and special, comforted and warm.

And slowly as the days followed and the buzz of the holiday season took over, I realized that the glow that once continued through January had faded. The harshness of becoming an adult happened. And it slowly took away from me realizing how colorful the dark city streets were. Illness, and fights, and death started to define that twinkly time.

That big shiny space in the pit of my stomach started to feel more and more empty as the weeks went on. I now still cherish the time around my birthday even more, because I know that as the twinkling lights turn on around town that my spirit will dim. I’ll look at each light I pass and wait to feel that same warmth I did as a child and maybe from just a few years ago. And there's no turning back. I have to deal with the harshness each year and go through the growing pains as if forcing myself to stare straight into a candle's light. It burns as I get close, but if I look away all I'll see is darkness.

I see lovers snuggling and feel the coldness of my bed even more. I hear of family plans and feel the distance from my father even more. His holiday card and check staring back at me. The warm, fuzzy memories have been taken over by memories of hospitals and tears and distance and confusion. You don’t need to watch It’s A Wonderful Life to fully understand what some have known most of their adult life...what mothers remind their broken-hearted daughters over tearful, cold telephone calls- the holidays suck.

For me the same journal entry each year ends with this begging thought...next year can’t come soon enough.

Annual Holiday Solo Rant

I need to remind myself for the millionth time that I shouldn’t drink and blog. Emotional, dramatic jibberish comes out. I’ve been falling back into bad routines with some drunk crying while out. Luckily, it’s only been in front of my bbf E whose known me since my first bowl haircut in the first grade.

I’ve been working on staying focused and strong at work and that’s been translating to emotionless and distant in my personal life.

Hence the continuous physical-only relationship with the Brit and the guy friend hookup over Thanksgiving. I tell myself that I don’t want a relationship, I don’t want to be dating right now or sitting across from a stranger telling my life story. I want to coast into 2011 with as little small talk as possible.

And hence the gradual pushing away of all friends who have an inch of drama in their life. I refuse to sit across from someone as they dump on me their boy troubles. Most of them are the cause themselves- stuck in bad relationships because they’re too afraid to be alone. If it’s one thing my mother has taught me it’s that it’s better to be alone then with the wrong guy. In either case, you may be unhappy and occasionally eat a container of Cool Whip, but at least you’ll be in control solo.

Have I become guarded and slightly bitter after a long year of seeing my own relationship and a dozen others fall apart? Am I pushing friends and potential interests aside to protect myself and save emotional energy that’s already hovering on empty? Am I maybe hitting the spiked eggnog a little much and shutting out holiday cheer?

Yes, yes and yeah.

What can I say? At this point, being self absorbed is a tactical survival method that I need in order to get to 2011. After that, well- I’m hoping the cynical fog will lift a little and we’ll see what I have left in front of me besides my blackberry and new knee high boots.

Just Stand Up

Does the heart open and then close before it breaks? Do I spend weeks floating on air before I realize I’m crashing? Do I beg for change when all I really want is his body to hold me close like before everything changed?

Is your first love always there until...you accept that love exists again? Am I going to be hard, and broken and alone, until... I fully shut him out and let myself live alone. Will he one day stop looking at me, touching me, like he used to. God. Why did I fall for the nice guy? It could be worse. I know, my breakup could’ve been more of a heart break. But it would’ve been nice if the break was less nice and more bitter then sweet. It would’ve made breaking from him, easier for my heart.

I saw someone kiss him tonight. And maybe he kissed her back. But she kissed him again. And I was standing there, in that moment. Wanting to be anyone else. Not wanting to see any of it. Wanting, to be a part of anything else.

It’s a slow, easy, friendly torture, to be friends with your ex.

One kind of torture that I can flirt with out of boredom, out of slight, silly hope. But not out of reality.

To him-

You know how you’re friends with your exes. and you stay in touch and you know whose a swinger and whose having a kid.

well that’s not going to be me.

im never going to be friends like that. because i’ll always be waiting for you to want more. and that's all i really need to say. for me.