Christmas was a blur of warm fuzzy feelings and binging on family time. My cup runneth over. We cut back on the girls’ gifts this year but they still seemed to get everything they could want and more. My parents spent Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with us. There were grandparents and new babies and lots and lots of love. There wasn’t even a Christmas Eve filled with wrapping sessions because, for once, we did it two weeks before. It was beautiful and magical and I even think I might remember some of it clearly but then the immediate overwhelming sense of impending doom infiltrated every fiber of my soul and I was still. So still that you could hardly notice I was there. I was hoping that disaster and doom would pass me by.
I’ve been missing from the blog, social media and any online activity lately. Sure, I still wake up every morning and check my phone before I get up. I share and like and comment on my friend’s warm and fuzzy posts about the love of the holidays and then it happened. I began to read all the posts about being alone, going through divorce, losing someone, losing children, losing parents, being sick and dying of cancer, missing those who they lost and my heart nearly burst from sadness and then from guilt. How the hell am I so blessed when so many others are in such pain? Then I remembered how much pain I was in last year. My heart was broken. I spent nearly a year muddling through the fog and pain of surviving a shitty year. A monumentally shitty year and then I realized that last year I was the sad status.
Then I began to wait for the doom. It sickens me that I can never enjoy happiness because I am always waiting for the counterbalancing hurt of life to even out the joy because no way life is going to let me walk around smiling like a happy, dopey dumb sonofabitch. Life is going to kick me in the balls. It always does, when I least expect it. I know happiness does not last forever but I so want to enjoy these little moments of happiness without worrying about the next bad thing around the corner. The sickness, the death, the loss, the pain and the hurt. So this is me, wishing all of you love, laughter and happiness. This is me trying to overcome my own neurotic state of impending doom. This is me enjoying the small moments of happiness that permeate the air and fill my lungs.
May God bless and keep you all happy, healthy, and wealthy with warm beds and full bellies. May life smile upon you and may your children be safely in your arms, your love holding you tight and may you be blessed with all the love, prosperity and success that the world can muster because life is too damn short to worry about the impending doom that may or may not be right around the corner. The price of happiness is not doom. The price of happiness is laughter and a full soul.
Image via Zetson