December 25th

This day is weird for me and probably always will be. It’s got some really freaking happy memories attached to it, but also some of the very worst.

I’m getting over it, a big part of that is evening out the memories with mundane ones, so I usually try to pretend it’s just another day.

But it’s really hard to when for weeks there’s this collective swirl of hysteria that permeates into everything. My weather app’s mascot is wearing a Santa outfit and I didn’t ask it to do that.

This year I took the dogs for a walk at 6am. The world was silent. There were a few cars on the road, but so spaced out that they felt like they were placed there out of obligation rather than arriving organically.

No matter my insistence that it’s just another day in the time soup that is the month of December, the madness inflates around you, smothers you through cracks you didn’t know were lurking under the paint.

I’m trying to embrace it this year a little. Just a little. I put up fairy lights. They’re so beautiful, I think I’ll keep them up one way or another the whole year around. I want my life to be aesthetically beautiful.

Maybe that’s my mission this coming year.

I want to be soft. I want to be comfortable. I want to be safe. I want to be strong.

I want to be looked at. I want to be a main character. Six seasons and a movie, babe.

Stay tuned, I’ve decided I will be here after all.

(Any art worth a damn in my house was painted by the extraordinary artist Oliver Scarlin)