Christmas?

So. Christmas is a mere week away. This sudden awareness shocked me, sent me into a veritable tizzy. Christmas, really? Usually I have so much time to prepare mentally, usually the expectation grows as the weeks draw towards the holiday. This year, however, I have been monumentally distracted. So much so that Christmas has sprung itself upon me without warning.

It is hard not to be unnerved.

You see, if Christmas is coming, then so is the New Year... that one, arbitrary day that sends me into weeks of retroflection. I will not go there quite yet, though. No, right now I am trying to hold onto my Christmas before it's over and done with.

I have always tried to make Christmas a time apart, ever since I started to get older and Christmas started to lose some of it's innocence (you know you're growing up when you suddenly realize that Santa doesn't exist and all along it's been your father leaving those presents under the tree). Still, I try. I try not to get distracted, I try to pay attention to those things I hold dear. I try to slow down just a little. I don't want Christmas to morph into that stressful thing that only needs to be dealt with so our lives can resume along normal patterns. I want it to stay at least a little bit magical.

That becomes more difficult this year, I think. It is good to be home. I needed to come home and see the little smile my mother gives me when I wander into the kitchen. I needed to sit and talk with the people I've missed. I needed to hear my father make yet another lame Christmas joke. I really needed to sleep in... However, this year has been one of such massive shifts that I still feel dizzy and discombobulated. Sometimes I don't know how to act, or what to think. The dust, it seems, is still settling on a lot of things. This is also my first Christmas after moving out (for the most part). I dream of the way to used to be, only when I come home it feel like trying to squeeze myself back into a life that doesn't fit anymore. I sleep in a room that isn't mine anymore, and I realize that my family has kept moving and will keep moving whether or not I am there. Just as I've kept moving. And I will spend the next couple of years bouncing back and forth between the two. School to home, home to school. I feel displaced, as if I'm in some kind of limbo. Most days, I don't think about it. Most days, my sense of identity and passion for what I'm doing is enough to make me feel stable. In some ways realizing this makes me incredibly sad, and in other ways, incredibly excited and hopeful...

However, I think Christmas might soothe rather than compound these feelings. That is what I am trying for, anyway. I am trying to relax, and enjoy what I have. Which is a lot, if I think about it. Really, I am a very lucky girl.