What image, mental or photographic, brings up the feeling of exclusion and loneliness? At the holidays, you have so many choices for this trigger. Yesterday, I went to the local Target. All these big stores are starting to feel like half-empty warehouses. I looked at the coffee maker I was thinking of buying. It was a return. How did I know? There was a bit of wrapping paper still taped to the box. Suddenly a whole series of images. Choosing a gift, hoping someone will like it. Buying wrapping paper and a card. Listening to Christmas music while you wrap presents. Bringing them over, or putting them under the tree. The day arrives, some happiness, some underlying tension. And then a box gets returned. Perfunctory thanks. The culmination of all these hopes and dreams, goodwill towards men.
Ha. I had to get up and make more coffee. I’m not good at feeling the pain. And I just saw a quote from Virginia Woolf:
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
Maybe she has a point. But how much truth, and to whom?
I’m never really great at the holidays. A lot of things happened around then. I remember spending one Christmas in a motel room in Florida as a child. I think it was the first time there was an actual split in my thinking, both due to everything that had happened, and the shock of seeing palm trees with Christmas lights, a little fake tree. Everything seemed fake, constructed. I knew things would never be the same, and I was right. And very alone.
Yet I always try, at least a little. I have to acknowledge when people are better at it, more joyful, their constructions more successful. I listen to a selection of music that reminds me of other times, yet here we are now. It’s a funny thing, because I want the holiday to stay forever, yet I want it to end as well. Passing days without speaking to anyone is both disorientating and calming. I think of all the people who are alone, and wonder why the world is the way it is. We are all selfish creatures. I suppose. But the holidays seem particularly filled with disappointment this year. I don’t think you have to look too far for the reasons.
I am reading Austen now – again – but seeing clearly how cutting and cutting edge she was. She was a philosopher who didn’t ask questions, but set up situations in towns and rooms with people and slashed away at their surfaces to create a proof. Sometimes her comments are so abrupt, that maybe people skip over them, in favor of the burst of sunlight that comes out in the one paragraph of joy, where things do work out. A little like life. That would explain why she was initially sought to be portrayed as this gentle spinster aunt, sweet image in a mob cap, unassuming. But the standard default is to see women as nothing much, especially when they are quite a lot. They must be downgraded to helpmeet, or adornment, or finally invisible old crone, by the society that excludes their complexity, in favor of making a woman a vessel for whatever nonsense those in power think appropriate. In Austen’s world, women were supposed to go out with a companion. Now – we find that shocking, even as we watch our rights up for discussion, again, the blame for wrongdoing, placed at our feet again, Eve’s lament. This year brought both the horrifying story and incredible courage of Gisèle Pelicot . The memes that put her on the cover of Time as Woman of the Year. Because there is another reality. Not the one we have been force fed. She is a heroine. But I digress.
Austen sometimes is too harsh for even me, even as I feel reassured by her brilliance. Ironic, really, as everything she says is accurate, and nothing has really changed. People are still cruel and selfish, eager to be noticed first. The person of understanding is still rare. Every room a mixture of different ingredients. Must we accept it? There is one quote I must find – because like the heroine in Pride and Prejudice who realizes that she has never known herself before, this line made me pause. What am I expecting to find, under some mythical, decorated tree? Looking for a family of choice, as the LGBTQ+ world taught us. Looking for family by creating one. Looking. Does one ever stop looking? Perhaps it is time for me to grow up, as the Austen heroines invariably do, and accept as the price of a managed happiness, some needed education as to the state of society. Time to stop chasing after what isn’t working.
Here is the quote, from Persuasion:
She had seen too much of the world, to expect sudden or disinterested attachment any where…
But what trades do we make for relationships? Loneliness can make any deal seem a good one. But the holidays, and this time of year in general, I believe, is like a valley of darkness. All the hopes and expectations! The thought of love, of community, of people singing together. And the darkness when none of those things really happen, or memories of moments when love did seem to prevail. Maybe those moments of light are all one has.
And now, we are at the end of it. 12th Night approaches, and we have made it through – nearly. It’s impossible to think of next year, because that brings back the idea of going through this once more. For now, today, this afternoon, the winter sunset, the cold, the night, when cars stop racing past and there is a hush. There are planets and stars in a line. There are messages for us. The sky has seen many of these times. Monday will arrive, and this strange, magical time, will be at an end. The new moon that just passed is called the “quiet moon.” Can we be quiet, and gentle, the snow blowing in darkness, the rabbits leaving their prints, nothing more.
La vie est complexe, like in the Roz Chast cartoon. We are told to write our own story, and that is correct. We are told to feel our feelings, and that is correct too. But how to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis? Feel the hurts of our history, yet find a way to not repeat them or dwell on them, as this piece may be in danger of doing. To feel and observe; to be aware of the past, the hurts we have been dealt, the wrong decisions taken, and the good ones, and somehow not be so heavy with it all that we capsize. And to dream the right dreams, and learn from what the darkness and this 4am time of year teaches us.
To all those alone – I salute you.
