I'd sworn off speaking to you but somehow when I happened upon you at the store and saw the roil of storms raging in your eyes words weren't even required to break that vow. It was eviscerated in a silent instant. This time of year is always a bitter reminder of some sort of lost potential my heart made up when we were younger but that tempestuous strength was enough to punch me in the gut and send me careening back into your uncertain arms. They can't be compared, and anyhow there were storms in my eyes now too, transmitted like contagion. Bitterness is brittle, it can't stand up to such force.

You really have no idea how to treat people but a certain innate magnetism has saved you from ever needing to learn. And maybe that's fine, everybody's different after all, and what works for some doesn't for others. But I do believe in the give and take and I'm not sure you've got long-term give in you. But there's magic in your words, fire in your eyes, and I don't claim to know what's in your heart really but I believed at least for a long time the right components were in there awaiting excavation.

Being home for the holidays is supposed to mean jam-packing as many varied warm gatherings with old acquaintances as one can muster in a limited timeframe. At first a calendar of events seemed necessary; as time went by though people drifted further and further apart and meetups became relegated to those who managed to stay in some semblance of contact. I wonder when the number of other people revisiting this godforsaken town will bottom out completely. But for now at least there's a handful of people I can burn the midnight oil with, taking weird walks in the cold, growing more confident each year about the persons we want to be, the important principles we want to uphold.

Of course, those same people rightfully saw the red flag when I explained the situation. Something about abandoning convictions, or whatever. Our nighttime winter stroll might've resembled a lecture or maybe my head was just too far up my own ass to tell that they had my back. Still some part of me behind the transferred tempest acquiesced and understood that this was an aberration to overcome and not some perverted twist of fate - we're not bright-eyed teenagers anymore after all.

It feels like the older I get the less of a fanfare there is around Christmas. Growing up it was the most exciting holiday, restless practically sleepless nights spent on the couch getting a yearly dose of Super Mario 64 in before the magic gaming machine disappears with whoever brought it that year, filled with anticipation over the morning bringing poorly wrapped boxes to the living room, over the possibility of snowfall, over the rare visits of extended family I was too young to resent or find distate for. I was lucky to sleep four hours and I was up with the sun regardless. Nowadays if we're lucky we'll have six people over, the time will mostly pass with my brother glued to three different sporting events on the TV, and I'll oversleep and shower moments before the big meal late lunch is served, and we'll all exchange gift cards which are just money already spent. Maybe eventually no one will come over for Christmas at all. Like with the inexorable drift of interpersonal connections perhaps this is a natural consequence of age.

Well, this year our family's Christmas celebrations, if they could still be formally called that, were over by about half past four; everyone seems to be losing their eyesight and no one wants to drive after dark. I had some new pajamas and a big bag of chocolates and I pondered a bit why I still found such beauty in the big multicolor lights of the Christmas tree. Did they stand for bygones? Do people keep up traditions simply because it's more painful not to? Was today a pale facsimile of Christmas last year, and the year before that, and so on?

I'm plucked back out of my head ironically mercifully by a post-dinner message from you. It's time to escape, family's unbearable, well it's true your mother was never kind that's for sure. Let's meet up outside the church between our houses. It's dark, it's getting colder, so I wrap a scarf you made years ago around my neck and head out.

The eerie orange glare of the streetlamps illuminates the whole parking lot of the church - you'd think just driving by that they'd never need all this car space but if you passed at the right hour you'd get to experience an ounce of gridlock-borne schadenfreude. Right now though there's nary a soul in sight, the birthday party's over. You won't speak a word or look me in the eye but you grab me by the hand and whisk me along the side of the building. Eyes adjusting to the darker light it turns out there's a quaint little park back here, a picnic table, some benches, flowerbeds that probably look quite lovely in other seasons maintained by middle-aged God-fearing moms like yours.

When at last we perch crosslegged facing one another on a bench in this secluded nook, no pleasantries are exchanged, instead you launch right into a long-winded apology of sorts, but the kind whose motivation is easy to detect like a scent on a dog's nose. The kind that always relates back to how you feel, the kind designed to make you feel better about yourself with ultimately very little to do with anyone else. I have perhaps heard a few too many of these but no matter how I feel it's best to at least hear you out. It's been a while.

Snow has started falling as you finish speaking to me. I guess my younger self is getting a taste of white Christmas here in the present, and I feel it in a way that tells me there might be more to traditions after all. Maybe I'm feeling a bit sentimental. I try to be fair and take at least some of what you just said at face value, even though history has shown me that's unlikely. We continue like this, eyes downcast, ostensibly hashing out ordeals too heavy to be hashed. The snow is really coming down now, a wet snow, probably destined to be gorgeous in the morning all covering the trees.

After some time dredging up grudges and picking uselessly at scars I suppose the weight of the snow on the power lines grew to be too much and the sound of electricity loss is palpable from our surroundings as generators die down. It's dark. The atmosphere changes in all senses and you finally look up at me for the first time where I can see lightning dancing around brilliantly. My vision becomes fragmented in stop-motion bursts as time seems to dilate around us or maybe my perception is just overwhelmed. It's a strange power you have and I can feel the crackling of bolts in my eyes too. Nothing and everything make sense at the same time and it's beautiful in some sort of way that I've always been chasing after. Why is it like this?

Reality threatens to barge back in as my phone buzzes in my pocket. Oh right, I was supposed to go see my friends again tonight and time escaped me. I silence it, but momentarily the buzzing returns insistent, and I don't suspect I'll be able to break the pattern after another try. With a loud thunk from nowhere specific, the power kicks back on around us, shockingly quick for what is surely a holiday for nearly everyone. I blink a few times and nothing more seems to flow through the chaos of your eyes. My phone buzzes again, demanding to be relegated to silent mode. It occurs to me then that there's no reason to continue this charade. We need only carry with us the parts of ourselves that allow us to flourish, the rest is dead weight, old traditions that can be let go or culled in favor of new traditions and that which retains meaning, severed connections in favor of fresh ones, a hole hollowed out from the tree of our lived experience.

Starting the car beneath the amber glow of the streetlights I feel a torrent burst forth from my body, a flood flowing out of my eyes, a long-awaited purge of some part of myself that ought never have been in there to begin with and was waiting for the right moment to unburden itself. I want to be my own person not feel defined by useless baggage from whatever past we shared. And so on that Christmas night I found a wellspring of resolve to only ever move forward, a new personal conviction I won't let slip from my grasp. You can see it in my eyes.


12/23/23