I’ve had days of dread and sadness, feeling almost like it culminated in last night’s Last Lair of the Year. Horror of what 2023 wrought, fear of what 2024 shall bring. Realizing that I’m not doing everything I want, fearing doing what I want to do, or need to do. Not sleeping. Not feeling present while I’m awake. I had a Lovely Christmas, but it feels like it was an effort, pulling myself out of this morass in order to actively participate in joy.
And I need to wash my hands better because there’s something insanely spicy on my finger and that’s ALL in my eye now.
At least a dozen friends are down for the count with COVID or similar lung ailments. It almost feels like the depths of the Pandemic again with disease creeping at every corner. Walking Pneumonia sounds too much like the Walking Dead, and though I’m a believer that slowly we evolve through sickness and trouble, I feel us getting weaker all the while.
Clean the mics. Stay home if you’re sick. Have a backup plan. Wipe your children and put them in a hermetically sealed box well away from ME.
My mom threatened to bring me Christmas ornaments left over from childhood. I have a vague image in my head as to what she may be referring to but on Christmas day she let me off the (little wire) hook and solely brought an old mouldering box of Christmas lights – including the little bubble lights like my grandparents had! I went through and tested them all and sure enough, the only ones that didn’t work had a note on them from my Dad dated Christmas day of 1998 saying they don’t work.
I have trouble throwing things away. I can get myself to do it, but I often feel like I’ve got to ask permission. I take a picture of an item, because it’s the memory-trigger that I REALLY care about, but little sentiments or statements can throw me into a guilt spiral over something stupid like a t-shirt or a broken toy. I Live right on the edge of dread inspired by that one scene from Labyrinth, weighted down by my old possessions.
The Trip got me away from that for years, but certainly being sedentary and owning a home brings it all thudding back. Filling spaces and attics with accretions… with my friends’ parents I know there’s a sense of guilt – a conscious effort to get rid of STUFF because they don’t want to think of their kids being burdened by it all – though some seem to be of the opposite opinion – that it doesn’t matter what they do cause it’ll be their kids’ problem eventually – but Kristen and I, before we even got serious, had the serious no-kid conversation and so I really got in my head about generational wealth, what to do and what to think about it all.
I’m at that age where I should start thinking beyond “what happens if something happens to me” and move along to “what happens WHEN something happens to US”. I guess I should will everything to my brother… in Brussels… who’s not going to want action figure collections and children’s books and instruments or a row house in Baltimore. The band kids? A trust? A non-profit?
Who knows. But this weighed on me the night before Christmas Eve. Beyond the Four Horseman galloping around and the very real REAL world problems out there, beyond me thinking about dreams and whether they’re worth having, beyond thinking about my health… I’m sad because my mom’s going to give me these Christmas ornaments that meant something to me, and unless I hand them to someone else with some sense of context, they’ll be just one more thing to shovel out of my home into a dumpster some day.
This isn’t an argument against having them. It’s an argument for planning what to do with them. Developing relationships so that you hand something to someone else and it has import and weight, but not guilt.
Stuff. Stuff and things.