Second Pandemic Christmas
-------------------------

I feel like a broken record here on the phlog but
this being the second pandemic Christmas is really
getting to me.

I have a complicated relationship to
Christmas. It's so close to my birthday that I
frequently feel overwhelmed by it all. Growing up
both days had that feeling of uneasy truce, the
kind of state that happens in a broken fucked up
family where the font of anger is willing to put
aside their rage and cruelty in favor of
overwhelming gifts and shows of kindness.

I state things the way I do because when you're a
child and you have a parent or sibling like my
father it doesn't feel like they're a person who
is making choices, they feel like a force of
nature.

You describe their behavior in the same ways
journalists describe cops: obscenities were said,
things were thrown, you were struck. It all
becomes subjectless passivity.

So, yes, it's a week timespan that feels like the
edge of violence even now.

But in the past few years I feel like our family
has started to put together Christmasses that
actually feel nice, despite it all.

Even last year, as I was talking to Tor about in
the middle of the night last night, felt better
than this. It felt like we were so close to
vaccination, to safety, to some kind of
resolution.

This year with the uncertainty around new strains
and whether vaccines are even going to be enough,
I've been lost in a dark melancholy. In part
because it feels like we couldn't even anticipate
anything feeling good. And I don't just mean the
three of us in this apartment, I mean I went on a
walk last night and saw the least number of houses
decorated for Christmas that I've seen in the last
ten years I've been living in thisneighborhood.
There were almost no stray voices, no people out,
no houses lit up. It's like we've collectively
become unstuck from the holiday season, at best
just going through the motions.

I don't know maybe I'm projecting. It's hard to
know. I just have been feeling so strange and at a
loss this holiday season.

We're going to make the best of it as we can,
though.

What else can you do?