christmas time is here

I just got off the phone with my dad, and somewhere in the middle of our conversation it hit me that my family isn’t my family anymore. The family I had is gone. To write that seems really depressing, but I need to see it written out to face the reality of it. He was talking about going to breakfast with me on Christmas eve, and it took every ounce of strength within me to utter the words, “yeah, that sounds good.” Really it sounded like the saddest version of Christmas I had ever heard. It turns out every ounce of strength wasn’t enough to stop my tears, and even though I knew crying would drive my dad away, I did it anyway, because I deserve to cry, and because I needed to, and because I couldn’t help it. The fact is I don’t want that kind of Christmas Eve. I want to run out last minute and help him find a gift for my mom. I want him to hold me and tell me it will all be okay and that he’s not the person he has proven himself to be. And it’s so hard to know that none of that is going to happen this Christmas.
It feels strange to hit a wall of sadness that most of the time you don’t even know is there. And somehow it feels like the largest relief in the world. Sometimes I scare myself when I just feel really numb. I can get pretty passionate about general injustices of the world, but when it comes to the closest people to me in my life, the people that effect me and make me cry and make me laugh, and make me feel unloved or loved, sometimes I can be pretty anesthetized, or dead to it or something. What does that mean? I’m not really sure but I know it’s not probably healthy. But then I cry, and it’s not something sad like it seems, it’s proof that I’m alive. And I’m thankful for that proof. And that means something to me.
I bought these Christmas cards this year that have Christmas cookies and snowmen on the cover and it says, “Warm and Cozy Christmas to You.” On the inside it says, “May your season be wonderfully blessed with the warmth and love of Jesus.” Then it says, “Happy Christmas and Joyful New Year.” I bought them because they were really cheesy and I thought it would be pretty funny if I sent them out. And I did, you may have even gotten one. But then it hit me, I was ultimately making fun of a thing that deep down somewhere I really desire. I want to feel the warmth and love of Jesus and when I go home in a few days I want to feel warm and cozy and at home and joyful. I also know that that’s highly unlikely. I’ll probably feel pretty uncomfortable and sad, and angry, and I’ll laugh too, and feel a little joyful at times, but “wonderfully blessed with the warmth and love of Jesus?” That’s not how I would describe it if I had to. So it turns out that I desperately want what that dorky Christmas card says. And I want it so bad, and am so afraid that it doesn’t exist that it’s just easier to make fun of it and call it cheesy and cliché. Right now I sort of want to get back to a cheesy cliché life. Not that I really ever had one. If I did it probably existed somewhere in my ideal imagination of family and life.
It’s funny, in high school my friends would always say, “Lauren, your family seems so awesome, so healthy. Your parents laugh together all the time and fight with each other in front of people, but you know they love each other. You can just tell.” And you could tell. I really thought you could tell. And sometimes I still wonder why their love for each other just wasn’t enough. Was it all a figment of my imagination? And is love really enough to keep people together? It’s impossible to describe my parents’ relationship with any semblance of relational insight, but I still see that they love each other. They both admit they will love one another for the rest of their lives. It’s just too hard. And that makes it so much harder for me to come to terms with this life. The odds are stacked against us, but it still feels like they gave up. I can’t help feeling that they took the easy way out.
I don’t think anything could describe my general feelings better than what Largeman says in the movie Garden State:
“You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone…You'll see when you move out it just sort of happens one day one day and it's just gone. And you can never get it back. It's like you get homesick for a place that doesn't exist. I mean it's like this right of passage, you know. You won't have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for you kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I miss the idea of it. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people who miss the same imaginary place.”
That probably explains it much better than I could say it myself. Will I feel at home when I begin my own family, if I ever have one? I don’t want to wait that long. I long to feel at home again. I believe it’s possible, although the tone of this seems to be quite cynical. I have felt at home and I have actually felt the wonderful blessing of Jesus’ love. I don’t think I’d be so unsatisfied living this way if I hadn’t. I want to be home. I just don’t know where that is.