First of all, happy 2nd anniversary to Into The Gloaming! I did not write anywhere near this year what I wrote in 2020 – but am still proud of my blog. This year I have become busier, happier, and working on other things in my life. My writing will always be with me, though. I am in possession of my first diary, age 8, in which I discuss my upcoming birthday and my ankle surgery. Nearly every word is misspelled (spelling has never been my strong suit) but the feelings I tried to convey then are the same as I do now. Writing is my dark art. I’ve had years where I’ve written every single day – when I was trying to work through something. Other years I barely write at all.

I don’t care for Christmas. It’s no fault of my parents. The Christmas’s of my childhood were magical and I have many warm memories from those. Around age 12 I experienced the onset of Seasonal Depressive Disorder. I had no idea what it was, of course, only that the darkness compressed and crushed me October through March each year. In my 20’s I would be medicated during these months but the cold, incessant darkness was still there with Christmas being the largest defining characteristic of it.

As I grew older, I had traumas that occurred during the holidays and this added, at times, a dangerous edge to the season. A snapshot of myself at 22, dressed in the next days clothes – because the morning brought such heavy despair with it – dressing was next to impossible – has come up in therapy more times than I can count. These moments and days that I found myself consumed by suicial ideation have remained burned into my psyche and are extremely easy to trigger this time of year. Unable to sleep in my bed -frightened I would wake up and mistake what year it was. That if I woke up confused, believing it was the previous year, the resulting shock of reality would be deadly to me. I could not risk more than I already was. And so, I showered, dressed for the following day, put my coat on, set my backpack beside me and curled up on the couch where I would never be confused when I opened my eyes. My roommates had hung a single strand of Christmas lights across the far wall and any time I opened my eyes they were the first thing I saw. I was taking chorus that semester. We’d been rehearsing Christmas songs since September, when things took a turn for the worse. Everywhere I went was brightly lit with Christmas and it magnified the darkness I found myself in. In my pain, every one of these lights, sounds, songs and smells burned into my subconscious memory. Marking them as associations.

Like the whiff of cigarette smoke I smelled right as I was attacked from behind at 24 years of age. Association. The smoke itself wasn’t dangerous, the person who had been smoking was. Christmas lights themselves are not dangerous. People who hurt you are. Christmas is something we experience intermittently. The summer ends, there is a chill in the air, Daylight Savings starts and the most remarkable thing of all of this is Christmas. The lights, the sounds, the smells, the songs, the pressures, the discussions, the traditions. Bound together with the frigid air. We don’t have a lot of chances to re-condition ourselves. It’s not like the grocery store. Yes, I have been PTSD triggered by my grocery store. But it’s a necessity. Over time, it became a regular grocery store to me again. Other things are just not worth the trouble. Planet Fitness, the place I ran up to 2 hours a day trying to stay alive during the Christmas season of 2018 and I are done. I will never go back there, Nor do I have to. I don’t want to be reminded how I felt. I don’t want to stand in the same place. I don’t want the same view. I don’t want to hear any of the same songs. I don’t want to smell the smell it had. And I don’t have to.

Christmas is everywhere. As I sit here writing, my husband has the TV on and every commercial is a Christmas one. I can opt-out of a tree in my house. I cannot opt-out of the trees that are everywhere, though. I can’t opt-out of people talking about it. I can’t opt-out of showing people I love them even if it means having to participate each year. I can’t opt-out of the weather – even in Florida, where I currently reside. Today the sun set at 5:34 and we still have 20 days till the solstice. 40 more minutes of increasing darkness before we begin to tilt the other way.

Things seem less scary when you have a plan. So I’ve been trying to make a plan for this holiday season but haven’t come up with much. Making a plan feels a lot like still having to participate in something I’d rather not. I digress. I’ve looked at a lot of Advent Calendars this year. For others, these are the countdown to Christmas. For me, they are the countdown of the most treacherous month of the year. I chose Advent Writing because it’s what I do when I’m in a mood. Even sitting here writing this has made me feel more like myself. I think I will keep it.

I intend to write each day – for a maximum of one hour (I don’t want to tangle with my perfectionism that will have me editing for the following 3 days.) I’m not posting a link to these. A friend of mine attempted to put her similar feelings about Christmas to paper. She divided page and wrote “Traumas” on one side and “Feelings” on the other side. I saw nothing of what she later wrote but I thought it was a good idea. It brightened my mood to see it. I felt less alone. While I have trouble keeping my feelings to myself, I also don’t go out of my way to ruin a time others find a happy thing. So I’ll just keep it here and see how it goes.