Have a Melancholy Christmas...

November 27, 2022

Despite what marketing wants me to think, after Thanksgiving will always be the start of Christmas and the winter season. Except the “hype” for me is… strange. I do feel genuinely excited for Christmas because the mood of the holiday is really nice and cozy for me. But at the same time, it also feels somewhat depressing too. Something about Christmas and the winter season, while I like, makes me feel melancholic as well. Winter is my favorite season, period. But somehow it makes me feel alone as well. When I think about Christmas, I think about being with your family and friends, and I have family, but friends… not really. At least, not in person. I’ve been living in Arizona for about 2 and a half years now as a former Washington resident. Since then, while it was really hard for me to get adjusted most of the time being here, in recent times, I have begun to make friends, but I don’t feel any sort of deep personal connection for any of them (no offense to you guys if you’re somehow reading this). The only people I really feel connected to are all online, either being my old school/church friends or friends I met through Discord. And I don’t want to exclude them or discount them by any means since they mean a lot to me, but I do feel the need for in-person relationships more than online. Something about the feeling of having the people you love in-person with you feels really good to me. It’s nice. It’s comforting. But I don’t have that now. And for a lot of people, the things that define what Christmas is to them may not be that, but for me, that’s a defining aspect of it. Anyways, sorry for going on a tangent about this. It was an attempt to contextualize and externalize how I feel about Christmas. This probably won’t be the last time I discuss my social situation though. To whoever reads this, I hope you have a wonderful winter and a wonderful rest of your day :)