On Family and the Holidays (and other ramblings)

It is two days after Christmas now.  And I am very, very glad to be back home.  It's not that I don't love my extended family.  It's just that the greatest benediction I could ever give is this: "May you never be as stubborn as my grandfather."  He is stubbornly clinging to the idea that he is the same as he's always been, that he can do everything he always could do, and that he's always right, even in the face of incontestable evidence. Thank God for my grandmother, who can handle him some of the time, and for one of my aunts, who handles him the rest of the time.  Because he is old, and frail, and unsteady on his feet.  His hands shake, and he is not capable of doing everything he wants to do.  And while I understand his fierce struggle for independence and control (I do understand. I do), the fact is that my grandfather is not an easy person to be around when he's trying to do something he can't, or when he is wrong and you are right beyond a shadow of a doubt, but he won't see that.  I love him, but I prefer to do it from a distance.  Especially when being around family just sucks up all of my people-energy.  But all in all it was a good Christmas.  I received a Doctor Who tee-shirt from my cousin and her fiance, who are also Whovians, and who I enjoy talking to.  I didn't get many other presents because we still have another one or two Christmases to go, and those ones are the ones where I typically get a larger percentage of my Christmas gifts.

We were at my grandparents for the last day and a half, and I spent most of the time reading.  And I don't know.  I really want to just hang out with my friends now.  For the next week until I have to go back to school.  I hate that break is so short.  I should have come back to Kalamazoo on Sunday night so I could have spent more time with people that I really wanted to spend time with instead of using up time reading for hours and hours until I could come home again and do what I really wanted to do.  And now I feel really disconnected from everyone, despite being in the same city.  I just don't know.  It's really complicated to try and figure out what I really want, what I really think, and I'm inside of me.  What about other people?  How can I ever really know other people?  I guess I just have to trust that the person that they show me is really person that they are inside.

“Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more of less if they could see inside of you?...If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone, anyone, love me?” 

Sometimes I believe that what this quote is saying is true, and sometimes I don't.  Because I see inside of myself and see bad things, but also good things.  And other people have shown me things from deep inside of them.  I have held my friends as they have cried-wept-for the shame and sadness of the things inside of them.  And I have not hated them for it.  I have loved them more fully.  I have rejoiced when my friends have shown weakness, and loved them all the more for their vulnerability, for letting me see inside of them a little more.  Regardless of whether I believe in the truth of it or not (apparently I currently do not believe in its veracity), it is a quote that I enjoy.  I enjoy the language of it, the slight wistfulness and sadness that it communicates.  And for some reason it popped into my head tonight.  Quotes keep doing that.  I suppose it's what happens when you start collecting them.

I don't really know my own mind tonight, but I do know that I do not want to go to sleep.  Something in me rebels against it.  I want my friends, I want to talk and cuddle and just be with those I love who are not my family.  And maybe I'm just feeling a little lonely and sad and alone tonight.  I suppose I have been for several days.  And this isn't how Christmas is supposed to be.  It's supposed to be lights and cheer and love and Jesus and family and friends and warmth.  And instead it's been exhaustion and expending effort and loneliness and waiting and hours and hours of reading.  Which is basically what the previous two or three weeks were.

And now I'm feeling sorry for myself.

I wish you were here to hold me until all my sad feelings go away.