Home for the Holidaze

I hate to admit it, but I'm feeling underwhelmed about Thanksgiving. I'm not completely sure why--I think it's a bunch of smaller reasons cobbled into one big reason.

Like that I feel chronically exhausted, and I am worried that Thanksgiving Break will not be very break-ish. [which is at least partially my fault and I should really learn my lesson, don't you think?] I want to see my family [both sides] and I want to spend some time with Joey's family, and I want to do the things we did in Thanksgivings past.

But I think the problem is that this isn't like Thanksgivings past. It's the first year that Joey and I don't have classes and an "official" Thanksgiving break. Our break is simply whatever both of us can manage to take off. And that adds to the stress of it, the fact that it's not much of a break for him.

There is also always the looming heaviness of certain Thanksgivings in the past. This time of year carries the silent threat of mania and crazy--I don't know why, if it's just all the holiday mess matched with the inconsistent weather, if it's the general stress of this time of the school year. There's the pain, the sudden specific memories of moments that arise for the first time in months. Things that you haven't thought of in so long. And then suddenly, your muscles remember that you once took off a ring [that you'd kill to wear again] and placed it between you like a threat.

Or your text message goes off, and your breath shoots up inside you, your lungs remembering the panic of your beating heart, remembering how your brain shot off fireworks to trigger your manic smile.

And although you've vowed to never again wield a ring and the promise of love as a weapon, although it's now and not then and things are different and better and beautiful--you worry.

I worry that the holidays will never be perfect and bright ever again. That even the movement of our hands to grasp each other will not be able to 100% overcome the shadow. That I'll never sit down for Thanksgiving lunch, not ever again, without thinking--if only for 1 second--about the way things were.

That, I think, is it.

***

Which reminds me:

The problem of the accumulating detritus of quotidian memories had not yet begun to distress him, although it was tiresome to remember every day of one's life, every conversation, every bad dream, every cigarette. There were times when he hoped for forgetfulness as a condemned man hopes for mercy.
-Salman Rushdie, from Shalimar the Clown