…I want us to forget them [Wild Flowers, All About Eve]
I drink the tea that I let go lukewarm while I think about winter, and holidays, and the progression of time. It’s still early in the day for me, 10am–but I get up later than a lot of people do. I’m already dressed, but not quite ready to leave. Today Mom and I will go to the Festival of Trees, a holiday charity event for Kennedy Krieger that we attend every year, braving Black Friday traffic and poor drivers to get there and look at a display of themed Christmas trees and wreaths while we fight against crowds.
I hate being trapped in the throngs of people but I love the spectacle and the magical feeling of the event, so I put on my mask and deal with it, even though I know we’ll probably be the only masked people there and that I’ll be utterly exhausted afterwards. The holiday season is filled with complex feelings like this; I celebrate Yule and [secular] Christmas, which often feel at odds because of [religious] Christmas. Both Christopher and I have birthdays that are crammed into the holiday weeks. His comes before and mine is stuck in the weird limbo between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Winter holidays are always a bag of mixed feelings because of this. I get a year older, the world gets a year older; time marches on and has its way with us and while I’m glad we’re both here, I think we’re both feeling the weight of our age.
So the holidays have always been magical and joyful, but underpinned with a melancholy that’s haunted my life. No matter how happy I am, there’s always that existential dread under the surface, and I’m grateful for every twinkling light and jingle bell that helps distract me from it. This year the dread is louder than ever, because of *gestures widely at everything* –and I have no idea how to fight against it other than to lean into the magic and found moments of joy and being as kind as possible to everyone who doesn’t want people like me or those I care about to die or disappear. I’m especially focusing on those who are in positions of less power and luck than I am. They get all my kindness and whatever assistance I can offer.
That’s the best way I know to beat the winter doldrums and fight against the rising tyranny. I don’t care about stuff. I want kindness and justice and actually, yes, the downfall of this late-stage capitalism driven hellscape that the US has slid into. I can’t do much to put my boots to the ground in this fight, but I can contribute the skills I have. That includes my words, because words are powerful. It includes my resistance to being ground down by the ones who profit from it.
Fuck that, I’ll live and be joyful out of spite if I have to, if it burns their buns to see me out here disabled and queer and living my best life despite whatever dystopia they want to throw at us. Radical fuckin’ joy, my friends. I’m going to weaponize it if I have to. Let’s thrive despite all their attempts to crush the spirit out of us.
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