Well thank God that’s over. Wait…I still have New Year’s Eve to endure.
Why does the holiday seem to drag on and on and on? I took my tree down today. Historically, I was always melancholy when this event occurred. Today, I was almost giddy. But a speck of the melancholy hovered in the background.
As holidays go, this was the best one I’ve had in years, and for that I am truly thankful. I even, don’t be shocked, cooked! Yes. A full meal. That I served to others. On my Christmas china! I’m not sure what came over me but I suppose it happened while listening to some damned Christmas song, or while watching a sappy Christmas commercial with families and kids and gifts of jewelry, or perhaps it was my overabundance of egg nog consumption this season.
Regardless, it happened, I succumbed, and voila! Christmas dinner was served. Just to keep it real, however, the day was warm, my AC went out, I burned the rolls, undercooked the carrots and made a creamed corn concoction that was new to me that tasted … well … weird.
However, I had BOTH of my children with me, my granddaughter, my parents and one of my brothers at home. Overall, it was a really good day. Happy, even. Yes, I guess you could say it was a “Happy Holiday.”
Of course I inevitably started thinking, though, and soon, after everyone was gone, I realized I just wanted to drink more egg nog. That’s been my tonic of choice this season. It worked well to ward off the evil spirts of Christmases past. But it didn’t really take away the ghost of Christmas present, and the future? Fugedaboutit.
I guess the realization that I came to was that I am healing. Little pieces of my heart and soul are scarring over. They will never be the same, carefree parts of yesteryear. They will always bear the marks of sorrow, pain, and utter desperation. But they don’t seem to be oozing those delightful products quite so freely.
Have you ever had a scar? I have several, but I have one on my forehead where a skin cancer spot was removed. It has been 18 months since its removal, and still, I get prickles of pain and discomfort. The end product is a portion of my forehead that is sunken and scarred. Occasionally, it itches so badly that I feel like I have bugs crawling across my head. No, I don’t have lice. But I do have remnants.
Remnants of the old forehead. Nerve endings occasionally overreact to some unseen stimuli and cause me to experience momentary insanity. I can cover the scar with makeup but a close inspection will reveal the scar’s existence.
Now that I have thoroughly drawn you in with descriptions of my creepy crawly scalp, here’s why.
It will always be there. The discomfort comes much less frequently 18 months post-surgery. However, I don’t think it will ever go away. My skin, my forehead was surgically altered.
I think that’s how my heart and soul are. They were surgically altered. Divorce affects so much and the hope, the delusional hope that things will ever go back to the way it used to be is foolhardy at best and permanently damaging at worst.
After my Christmas Day shenanigans this year, I was able to step back and think, “Well, that didn’t suck.” Right now, that’s the best I can do. But it’s so much better than other years when it did suck, and sucked so badly that I could barely get out of bed.
So I guess you could say it was a Happy Holiday for me. In a weird, twisted, deranged, surgically altered way. The scar will be there for eternity.
So will I.
