Sunday, January 5, 2020
Interesting year. Not a bad one but challenging none-the-less. Dale and I reminisced this Christmas break about helping his parents move across state lines last Christmas break. We arrived home from that experience just a year ago yesterday. That was followed two months later with helping my Mom move from her condo to senior living. Big changes for our parents and a reminder to us that time is moving forward with little regard for our ability to process the complexity of feelings that go with those changes.
Our church, Gethsemane, recently closed and that has driven the two of us to a lot of reflection. It's been a spiritual home and a meaningful place for both of us and it's been painful to see it go. However, we wonder if at times we gave too much and used the distraction of its troubles to keep us from tending to other important matters in our lives.
During this break I had the desire to withdraw into myself. Usually during Christmas I want to spend time with others. I still made plans with folks, and in the long run I'm glad I did, but I was ultimately not wanting to spend time with others yet not wanting to be alone. I've been feeling more sadness than usual and I think on one level I knew I needed to process it.
Dale and I were out for lunch on one of the last days of vacation and we both revisited memories that neither of us had shared with each other before. We think they were pretty defining moments in our lives where the two of us realized that we felt different from others and that we had to withdraw into ourselves and not share with others who we were. We felt that we learned to withhold things we believed risky to share and also started to not share inconsequential things as well. We learned to not get close to others and to withdraw.
Christmas has always been meaningful to me but in my mania regarding it there's always been an element of using it as something of a distraction from life issues. After feeling like getting to the root of some of my pain the need for that mostly went away. Thus, as much as I enjoyed the season this year it was easier to let it go.
Throughout much of this Christmas break I've held a few people in my thoughts. Of course, one is my dad. The cemetery where he's buried is just up the road from me. I think of him often but especially when Athena and I walk past his mausoleum. Another is Brian, an old friendship that didn't end the way I wanted it too and was never really resolved to my liking. Finally, Sharon, my dear friend from high school. I didn't find out about her death until many years after it happened when I ran into a classmate I hadn't seen in years who knew her. While taking down ornaments from the tree today I held them in my thoughts for a while. It felt like the three of them were actually with me. We might say I was visited by three spirits from the past.
I decided to do a dry January this year and Dale decided to support me by doing one as well. A couple of close friends, Mike and Steve, have sung the praises of doing a detox month lately so I thought I'd try it out. We've both concluded that the ritual of drinking is what we miss more than the drinking itself. Mike and Charisse were over recently and once Mike and I were over the hump of not shaking up martinis we were fine not drinking. Related to this, the anticipation of cocktail hour is half the fun of cocktail hour itself. Not drinking has caused me to pay attention to some issues from my past, a few of them painful. This is a good thing. And my sleep since January 1st has been, well, incredible.
Letting go of past anger allowed me to more easily forgive myself for hurting others and holding on to it for so long. In forgiving myself I found it easier to forgive others I feel have hurt me. Quite an epiphany for Epiphany.
I've been feeling some sadness and melancholy with how fleeting life seems sometimes. But rebirth is the promise of Christmas and with that promise I'll move forward.
Our church, Gethsemane, recently closed and that has driven the two of us to a lot of reflection. It's been a spiritual home and a meaningful place for both of us and it's been painful to see it go. However, we wonder if at times we gave too much and used the distraction of its troubles to keep us from tending to other important matters in our lives.
During this break I had the desire to withdraw into myself. Usually during Christmas I want to spend time with others. I still made plans with folks, and in the long run I'm glad I did, but I was ultimately not wanting to spend time with others yet not wanting to be alone. I've been feeling more sadness than usual and I think on one level I knew I needed to process it.
Dale and I were out for lunch on one of the last days of vacation and we both revisited memories that neither of us had shared with each other before. We think they were pretty defining moments in our lives where the two of us realized that we felt different from others and that we had to withdraw into ourselves and not share with others who we were. We felt that we learned to withhold things we believed risky to share and also started to not share inconsequential things as well. We learned to not get close to others and to withdraw.
Christmas has always been meaningful to me but in my mania regarding it there's always been an element of using it as something of a distraction from life issues. After feeling like getting to the root of some of my pain the need for that mostly went away. Thus, as much as I enjoyed the season this year it was easier to let it go.
Throughout much of this Christmas break I've held a few people in my thoughts. Of course, one is my dad. The cemetery where he's buried is just up the road from me. I think of him often but especially when Athena and I walk past his mausoleum. Another is Brian, an old friendship that didn't end the way I wanted it too and was never really resolved to my liking. Finally, Sharon, my dear friend from high school. I didn't find out about her death until many years after it happened when I ran into a classmate I hadn't seen in years who knew her. While taking down ornaments from the tree today I held them in my thoughts for a while. It felt like the three of them were actually with me. We might say I was visited by three spirits from the past.
I decided to do a dry January this year and Dale decided to support me by doing one as well. A couple of close friends, Mike and Steve, have sung the praises of doing a detox month lately so I thought I'd try it out. We've both concluded that the ritual of drinking is what we miss more than the drinking itself. Mike and Charisse were over recently and once Mike and I were over the hump of not shaking up martinis we were fine not drinking. Related to this, the anticipation of cocktail hour is half the fun of cocktail hour itself. Not drinking has caused me to pay attention to some issues from my past, a few of them painful. This is a good thing. And my sleep since January 1st has been, well, incredible.
Letting go of past anger allowed me to more easily forgive myself for hurting others and holding on to it for so long. In forgiving myself I found it easier to forgive others I feel have hurt me. Quite an epiphany for Epiphany.
I've been feeling some sadness and melancholy with how fleeting life seems sometimes. But rebirth is the promise of Christmas and with that promise I'll move forward.
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