The holidays aren’t great for everyone. One would be wise to never assume that everyone is happy to embrace them.

And finally, the gauntlet has been run. 2015 is here, and now I can breathe a sigh of relief. At least for a little while, things will settle down. Until Valentine’s Day advertising kicks into full gear, I won’t have to worry about being made to feel less than human by everything I see and hear around me.

Maybe it’s just me? Maybe I’m the only one who feels like a pariah, a leper, for being what I am. I’m an introvert. Yet, I am lonely. I detest the company of people in general, yet I long for the companionship of a select few. I don’t have the energy to get to know a lot of people, so the few that I do need to be worth my time and effort. Can one person be a lonely loner? Maybe it’s an oxymoron. I can’t expect many to understand it.

The holidays make me feel rotten. They just remind me of how alone I am in the world. They remind me of how quiet my life is. If I fell off a cliff today, how long would it take for people to notice? Those kinds of thoughts are scary, but it’s where my mind goes this time of the year.

Christmas is to me, a social disease that the whole Western world suffers from. Holiday tales and movies ram the ideas of “peace on Earth and goodwill toward men” down our throats, but precious few people put that into practice. Christmas is all about status, it’s about want, it’s about oneupmanship, it’s all about money, money, money, a cycle of greed and excess that grows more wanton with each passing year. It makes me sick to watch. And each year, it reminds me of what I don’t have. Not material possessions, but what is really missing from my life. Christmas makes me feel like an empty husk of a person, and I hate it.

The New Year’s celebration isn’t much better. We Westerners are so strange. January 1st is a meaningless, arbitrary date. We don’t even celebrate a New Year to coincide with a change of season or a celestial event. You know, things that would make more sense to commemorate. I do appreciate the desire to look at a New Year as a clean slate, a way to bury the past and focus on the future. But then I see other people celebrate it. People that don’t seem so empty and lonely. Or maybe they’re just good at not seeming lonely. It makes me feel worthless all over again.

I usually try to write with some kind of message in mind. I suppose if I have one, it’s that the holidays aren’t all that they’re cracked up to be. Material possessions are much less important than the hearts and minds of those closest to you. Love is infinitely more precious than money or status.

If that message must go hand-in-hand with my bitterness, my resentment of a culture that makes me feel like a worthless human being for being alone, then so be it. And when Valentine’s Day rears it ugly head… well, we shall see what form my disgust takes.

FIN