Christmas

is the most beautiful time of the year.

Christmas is the biggest crush I will never get over the butterflies. I paint silly things make silly gifts and wrap them and send them away. Christmas just happens to have that special power to make me feel something closest to magic.

That said, apart from the first year when I realized how lovely Christmas can be and how long I’m going to love it for a long time, I’ve always been spending it alone..

Some years I would experience this alone but not lonely Christmas. I would just dive all in getting creative and generous with cards and gifts. Those years I would mostly be either single or in a casual crush, just enough to muse up some poems or paintings. I would just get high on anticipating and living Christmas.

And then there are years when I would be with someone with whom I would feel just a tiny little more in love than with Christmas. More than just gifts and cards, I would make plans, many plans, mostly happy romantic cozy plans with cutesy corny little things to do to spend the most beautiful time with that someone. I would imagine a time when I would be exactly where I want to be in the entire world. I would imagine smiling even when asleep.

It’s just the only time in a year I would very much mind being sad.

But then these years, like this one, or the one before, or the one before that, all I would end up getting is sad. To the point that I’m quite convinced now I’m such a bad person that never deserves to be happy during the most beautiful happy time of the year. I kinda got used to doing everything by myself now, even self-blame, so that there’s at least a reason I can know that could explain why I’ve never had a Christmas when I don’t spend alone or feel lonely and sad.

It’s just, sometimes you know, someone would step in and manage to stay long enough to make you let your guard down, then although with still one foot on the ground, before you know it you already start to believe they might really have something up their sleeves for you that is different from what you got before. Believe they might for just this once fit right into all the happy plans you have. And believe for just this once you might put away your lonesome and sad on the shelve .

But no, they stay long yet not long enough to be different.

At the end of the day, it’s not their fault. Things just happen and I’ve got my practice for years and years. I survive every time. It’s the kind of deja vu that my life seems to own by now. Just a couple tears to wipe away and a whole new year ahead to plan Christmas all over again.

Because it will always be the most beautiful time of the year.