EPIPHANIES: Christmas Edition

A - 'Tis the season (for melancholy)

My dearest readers, it is December 16th. The eve of Christmas eve is officially one week away. Am I at all prepared for it? No.

Well, I guess I kind of am. Objectively, that is. I completed my Christmas shopping last night during a very eventful trip to the mall and only ended up spending $20 on my entire family combined. 

Don't judge me, my budget is especially tight this year. 

Let's not talk about money, though. That's way too stressful of a topic and this book is supposed to be the opposite of stressful.

You may have noticed that the title is a reference to a very popular song. No, not Deck the Halls. 

This song.

This song has been resonating with me today because it feels very mental breakdown-y and I feel like everybody has been losing their minds lately. Why must Christmastime always be so filled with emotions, and why are those emotions either extremely good or extremely bad? I've come up with a few theories.

I'll use classic cheesy Christmas movie plotlines to support my point.

In every single Christmas movie featuring a middle-aged main character, she either loves Christmas or hates it. If she hates it, it's because of one thing and one thing only: family.

Family is one of the most exciting things about Christmas. I know it's definitely what I most look forward to each year... other than the food, of course. It's just so heartwarming to be able to see all of these wonderful people who you've known for your whole life, these people who have watched you grow into the person you are today and who have shown you unconditional love the entire time. 

Christmas is the happiest time of the year for me for this reason. But for so many, Christmas is a time that bitterly reminds them of what they have lost. This is starting to sound a lot like A Christmas Carol. Side note, that movie is kind of traumatizing. 

Moving away from the family theme, this time of year just seems to be super problematic for no reason. There's the stress of getting presents for everyone, trying to finish all your schoolwork before the break, and having to embrace the bitter cold of winter. It feels like the end of an era, and for once, I'm not ready for this era to end. Let me go on another tangent now because I just had a slight epiphany.

I think that whenever I actually start enjoying myself, the people around me start to have earth-shattering problems and then I feel bad for being in a good place with myself, which leads me to not be in a good place with myself because the guilt won't let me. Does that make sense? No it doesn't. But that's too bad because this is a genuine thing.

Exhibit A happened last year on my birthday. I had been having a really great day and then my friends started talking about how bad of a day it was for them. Then I watched the movie Onward and cried. Never watching that again.

Exhibit B was today. In an extremely rare twist of fate, this week was actually pretty successful for me and today was on route to capping it off perfectly. I received my mark for a math test that I took a few days ago and for the first time in a while, I actually got a really great mark. However, everyone else in the class started having outbursts over how they got bad marks and it'll drag down their average exponentially. Smh.

I guess those aren't really earth-shattering problems, but it's still unfortunate how that seems to happen. I just wish everyone could be happy all the time. I think that would fix a lot of problems. 

On that note, I'd like to leave you with this: times might be difficult right now, but they'll get better. In the end, they always do. 

I'm now going to write another chapter because I just got a burst of inspiration about a completely different topic.

See you soon...