Trying to Get the Feeling Again

At the beginning of the month I had tremendous Christmas spirit. It bungeed & came back but not quite so high. Then it just dissipated. I'm sitting here looking at a half-decorated tree with no care to finish it. It has to be done, but I just don't have the feeling.

There's a few causes & events that've happened which I can point at and say, "Aha! That's where I lost it!", but I can't seem to get my way back to it. And there's an underlying, "Fuck it." beneath it all that I can't shake.

Part of this is certainly out of a comraderie that's caved in since Thanksgiving. Friends have withdrawn en masse into their own funks (when I told a friend I'd gotten her a present, she blurted, "Oh No!" as if it was the worst thing I'd ever done; then a brother did the same- WTF?; another friend cried to me for days over the mess of a holiday she's spending with her son, which is now going well- for her; others have cancelled get-togethers; there's an unprecedented number of folks not even putting up a tree this year, etc.) . Little by little, the bits of joy fell away and crumbled, and now I feel totally demoralized.

So I think I'll do what I did before, just withdraw from everyone for a few days & try to get it back. But isn't the whole thing supposed to be about being with other people? I used to get such a kick out of giving presents. How's it happened that the same thing that used to give joy now takes it away? What's my world come to, that in order to have a Christmas spirit, I have to stay away from those I'm close to & love because they're so fucking miserable?

I really need a Happy Christmas. I guess that means being alone, now.