the karmic christmas

This year feels like that.  It really does.  How I feel about Christmas is like these bare branches this year.

I saw a photo of the tree that my editor designed — a bare branch like this with some simple glass ornaments on it.

It was one of the most stunning trees I’ve ever seen — but– what was best was its purity, for me.

For some reason this Christmas my heart isn’t in it.  It just isn’t.  My little brother is miles away and truthfully, my husband has never really “done” Christmas the way I like to.

For years I cooked for all the family members and they all argued with each other.  Our mothers couldn’t stand each other.

I used to bake batches of cookies for people at work, and now that I’m not working, that’s out.

The Winter Solstice is my anniversary.  He wanted that.  You know what?  I would rather have been married in the spring.

So, the holidays all come in a rush with everything packed together from now till Valentine’s Day.  Including my birthday.  The whole thing has been disappointing for years. It’s because you expect things to be like they were in your family.  Merry.

I want to be alone.  I do because I want to start over.  Looking at him is like looking at sorrow — this last decade was about that and we had to take everyone to the end.  He didn’t want children.  My greatest regret, ever.  Really.

I want to move someplace else and just start over.

I want to be free of this influence over me that makes all the decisions about everything.

I feel like this whole marriage was about some kind of karma I had to pay off, and I just feel finished with that.

Here are my wishes for the new year for myself and how I would do Christmas in the future:

1.  Be with somebody fun like I am.

2.  Have tons of you know what.

3.  Consider rethinking family.

4.  Have no obligations to strangers, anymore.  Period.

5.  Have a house with 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms so guests can stay.

6.  Be with somebody my age.

7.  Have a manzanita tree next year.

8.  Pick somebody who likes the kind of huge Christmas celebrations I do.

9.  Buy a boat.

10.  Have lots and lots and lots of you know what.

So, I’m really lucky on one front only this year.  A really fantastic writer and editor is looking at my book Heart of Clouds.  The way I see it is that I wrote that last year from the bleakest place I have ever been in.  It’s a beautiful book.  I know it is.

That book is my rescue.  That book is going to get me out of here.

I am really grateful to the editor.  God.  That is my Christmas present.  The only Christmas present, I might add.

I’m not going to have another Christmas like this one ever again.  Ever.

I don’t want any more sad effing years because life is too short.

He makes me sad, because he isn’t warm.  I’m warm.

A new house would do wonders in terms of changing my outlook on life.  It really would.

My biggest Christmas wish is about my book.  Please, please, please Santa…

Please help me on the rewrite and let me sail it out to the world.