I stand tonight in awe of my older brother, who draws on some unknown font of patience in dealing with his 2-year old daughter. I guess it makes sense--as people have told me, when you have kids, there's not a question of what you're capable of doing, you just step up to the plate and do it. That doesn't lessen how impressed I am. Or with my parents, with three boys. Sheesh.
I've not been feeling terribly Christmasy today. A year ago today I was getting kicked off a sailboat by a lying dickhole in the middle of nowhere on Mexico's Pacific coast. Since then I've managed to support myself, mostly, but I'm currently unemployed and my now-ex-girlfriend doesn't seem to want to speak to me (possibly because she thinks I'm a lying dickhole; if you have any insight on this, please let me know). It's been a bad mental-health day, and at a most basic level I feel like I'm still missing that thing, that wonderful thing, that hope, that sense of balance and that things will come out okay. That's unfortunate, because I need that to get through to the other side of whatever internal hell I'm going through at the moment. Assuming there is an other side. See, if I had hope and faith going I wouldn't be wondering.
Who am I kidding? I know there's an other side. There always is. That knowledge just isn't affecting how I feel.
But it's still Christmas, in twenty-seven minutes, and I'm here with my given family, and when I get back to the other coast my chosen family will be waiting for me, with hugs and smiles and years of in-jokes and bonds surpassing friendship. Also my dojo, my house, my housemate, my bed, all the things that help me feel as safe as I ever feel. It's probably going to snow here in Massachusetts tomorrow, which I'm looking forward to. I like the snow, with its incomparable stillness and the way a white-covered silhouette somehow expresses the nature of a thing.
God bless us, every one.