The Wolf, Himself

Hah... So it's a damned good thing I never made any sort of commitment on how often I'd use this, because it's been months, almost half a year, since my last post.  Depending on how you look at it, nothing has changed. But also, a whole hell of a lot has changed. We're poised on the brink of a shitty remake of World War II, but this time we're the fucking Nazis. Everything is infuriating and scary and every week (sometimes every day) some fresh hell gets birthed so there's not even time to digest what came before. There's glimmers of light, of hope, but they're tiny, precious and so goddamned rare.  The real bitch of it is... I just don't care. No, let me rephrase: I just can't care. I do care, I want to care, but it's so fucking much, and I'm so goddamned tired. To borrow a line from Em Beihold: It's like my body's in the room but I'm not really there, like I have empathy inside but I don't really care, like I'm fresh...

 I love Christmas. I always have. I love the traditions, the tree, decorations, stockings, Christmas dinner, family gatherings. I love presents, getting and giving. I love old classic Christmas movies and Christmas music. I love driving around on Christmas Eve looking at Christmas lights while drinking hot cocoa. I love the one present on Christmas Eve, and then sneaking out to put things in stockings. I love the anticipation of sneaking around with gifts, while trying not to find my own. I mean... At least I used to.  This isn't sudden. Not really. Christmas has gotten harder as the kids have gotten older. I think it probably started to get hard when it got to be too much to go home for Christmas. It was a lot easier to enjoy the Christmas traditions when there were all of the people who always made it special. And even at first, it wasn't bad to spend Christmas with just my immediate family, my wife and my kids. We'd send off gifts to other family, and we'd get videos...

 So this is something that is not a new realization, but... kind of is? Let's lay the groundwork.  I hate being misunderstood. It's one of the most frustrating things to me. I will use too many words to try to avoid it, too few words to avoid obfuscating it, but in the end, misunderstanding is always my destiny.  Earlier today, I was having a discussion with my wife. She kept asking me questions then cutting me off when I tried to answer which didn't help my frustration any. I blew up and started yelling in order to be heard, which didn't help her frustration any. But then we got into a dynamic that frequently happens where she would say something, and I would cut her off.  At this point in our marriage, I rarely concern myself with how often we cut each other off during arguments or even just spirited discussion. I've accepted that it's a part of how we communicate, and though it's certainly not healthy, we've survived it for over a decade. Today I got ...

I find myself often frustrated at not having an outlet to express the things I'm feeling. I know I could, and I have,  just write a journal. But it feels empty somehow to write things that no eyes but my own will ever see. Maybe that's egocentric; No one's ever accused me of humility except sarcastically, but there it is. At the same time, the things I want to write are raw and personal, and I could never make myself show them to people I know. Part of that is fear that I will hurt, confuse or worry... but a bigger part is because I am terrified that no one will care.  So here we are; a weird no-man's-land between the two possibilities, a blog I will never tell anyone about, but which could potentially be found. Some part of me worries about that too, remembering the sneering assholes who found my emo LiveJournal back in the day, but then a larger part remembers all of the blog entries I have made over the years, including many that I've shared elsewhere, and how se...