Holidays for me are often pain-filled triggers of
hell-filled holidays of days gone by. Days gone by
that have left scars where I used to wish happier (or more
"normal") emotions could be instead. Although for many,
alone or not, there is little chance of achieving the
kind of happiness that commercials would have us believe
"everyone" out there is enjoying. It's bunk!
This "happiness" is however, not my lot in life. It has
not been my experience. It is not my experience now. I used
to feel defeated and left out by this. Disconnected. Now I realize
that it is far more important to be connected to myself and
to my spiritual reality than it is to be engaged
socially for the sake of any holiday.
I have spent and continue to spend many holidays
alone. There is something safe and genuine for me in
this. To be alone with the time and space to nurture
myself as I need to depending upon what feelings
come up is important.
I used to feel that somehow my being alone at these
times meant I was defective, crazy or less-than those
who share these times happily (or not so - but immersed
in the drama of toxic families). Now I realize that
for me, I am being true to my own experience and feelings.
I am taking care of myself and that is all that matters.
What other people do on holidays or the way that the media
portrays these holidays is not my truth. I don't have
to live anyone's truth but my own.
I sit quietly reflecting upon what I feel on any
given holiday. I often stare out the window into
the trees, the sky or the snow (at Christmas). I see
in this picture, through my window, a world that sits
underneath the outer world, like I do. A world that
exists in paralell to the popular, like I do. I see
peace within turmoil and bent turmoil within this
paralell peace.
I feel related to trees and to empty side-walks -
bags that blow devil-may-care in the wind and to
birds that fly in seemingly aimless splendor. I feel
a kinship with the breeze. I feel moved by sunsets
and the awesome wonder of clouds swirling by in the
millions of formations that they take on. They are
different each time I study them, just like I am,
when I study myself.
Hours go by while the world spends this holiday
or that eating and drinking and talking and talking
and talking. So much talking. So much aimless and
pointless talking that so few remember much about.
I've been there. I've heard it all. It does not
move me. It does not interest me. I feel guilty at
how much it bores me. I long to be in the quiet-noise
that is my inner-world. I long for my window and my
pets. I long to just be: there. To breathe softly
- to feel, and to often shed tears. A catharsis of solitude
sits on my window sill waiting for me to partake of it.
This solitude sets the stage for a challeging renewal
of my strength of character. It also holds within it
so much bliss. The kind of joy and bliss that can only
be tapped through the gut-wrenching willfulness to give
gratitude to my pain.
Holidays, up until now, have often left me feeling pulled
in two directions. I have felt pulled to do the "social-thing".
I have felt pulled to the wild-call of the "party". Well, just
a little bit, sometimes. I have felt pulled outward to
that dangerous plastic arena where 'false selves' rule
and little real ever truly happens. Mostly I feel pulled to
my window of the world. Pulled to the profound promise of
purposeful inward philososphical and spiritual repose.
There is no talking. There is no noise. There are no pretentious
pious social mores to live up to. There is none of the clap-trap
produced within the social-sphere of all of that self-avoidant
yakety-yack.
There is just me and a manageable-snipet of the world in
my window. A dog on my lap and cats laying about the couch.
Surely this is eccentricity at its best. I deviate from the
norm each and every holiday. Oh how I used to worry what
others thought of this. Now, in the most extreme sense
of what it is to be eccentric, there is peace and freedom
in this empowering choice of mine.
Odd isn't it that many in the world would judge my
choice as sad or lonely. Equally as odd, don't you think
that so many run from what is truly their sadness and
their fear of being alone to the rigors of ridiculous
recreation placated upon pleasing the masses and providing
repetitive back-to-work grist for the gossip mill? Odd
isn't it that many would give voice and credence to the notion
that my holiday choice is one to pity. For it is I that
pity the poor mimicking masses their absolute need to
be validated. For it is from my utmost unconventionality
that my inner-freedom is derived. Freedom like a stone. Heavy,
yes, heavy freedom in that it is viewed as escapism in the eyes
of many who are using this "social-holiday-foray" to escape
what it is that I seek. But just thinking of that alternative of
losing one's self in order to have some version of a part of
oneself to be "found" by others weighs much heavier
upon me.
Any holiday is really supposed to be about leisure
and recreation or the observance or commemoration
of some event. Why are they then taken as cause
for ridiculously repetitively-re-rehearsed mondane
mini-plays of acted out past-patterns? What's fun about
that? Where is the true meaning in that? Some ancient
collective illusion of leisure, recreation or the paying
of some hommage to something or someone through worn-out,
over-done soiled traditions is nothing more than
stifling to my soul.
Yes it is fair to say that the damage has been done
in my case. Damage that lies upon an autistic reality
superimposed in the background of my yearning desires to
live within. Many have been damaged. Why do so many still
suffer these holiday get-togethers often with people they
don't even like or know well? Is not this "damage" of mine,
truly a gift. Is not the damage that I carry the very window
through which I am able to face and accept myself -- finally?
Asperger's Syndrome - a form of autism is such a comforting
gift when it comes to my holiday ritual. I can go places inside
that many cannot hope to travel. Learning to come up for social
air has also been a gift. The world is all too eager to judge
that which they do not understand as unworthy.
I suspect that the alternative terrifies many people.
Our culture has a way of making one single person and
the choices of one single person seem arrongantly-obsolete
not to mention inappropriately-outrageous. Why? Well so
that it (society - the ever esteem-sucking monster that it
is) can keep its citizens in line.
I could go on but my window beckons me. My solitude
beckons me. My new-found joy at being weird and different
beckons me. My desire to continue to explore my inner-
world and its meaning beckons me more than mere socialization
for the blasted sake of it.
Sitting behind my emotional wall of glass behind an actual
wall of glass, survivor that I am, tickles the rebel in me
bloody-pink. It delights my fancy. It suits me. It meets my needs.
It never lets me down. I am re-charged by it. I grow there. I am
alive there. I emote there and there is no one to tell me that
what I feel is inappropriate, ill-timed or not understood.
I can be freely as intense as I choose to be without fear of
some poor soul getting pooped out by it.
All that unfolds at my holiday window is mine. All that
unfolds at my holiday window is introspective. It teaches
me more about who I am at the very delicious depths of my soulful
self, which in turn teaches me much about humanity. I am a part
of humanity and very much connected to it even when I refuse to
play yakety-yack. My holiday window is a retreat. A retreat that
years of abuse led me to first need and then later to want and
now to cherish.
I write this on a "holiday long-weekend". It is Thanks-Giving
in Canada. I am alone. I have chosen to be alone. I didn't have
to be alone. But I had to be alone in another sense. Finally I
realize that the quality and essence of my inner-experience
on holidays can only be fulfilled by me following the beat
of my own drummer. My holiday song is a song for one. Life
has taught me a different side of holidays. It is not better
than the traditional social what-have-you just as it is
certainly not less than it either.
At my window night has fallen. The stars beckon me to
think, to ponder, to remember, to feel, to cry, to write,
to give room for this world in paralell to fire on all
cylinders - to go within and to be with myself. My
window beckons me to sit still and to deepen my experience
in the realm of my psyche and spirit - I am sitting here
in such peaceful, utter silence I can almost hear it.
Silently it moans and it sighs. It giggles softly and it
embraces my most energizingly-eccentric essence always,
consistently and completely.
Gone is the burden of guilt I used to carry for feeling
less-than. Gone is the sense that I have to aplogize for
being who I am and for doing what comes naturally to me
to do in times that were of the utmost pain, stress and
abuse for me in my past. No more will I seek the soothing
solutions of a society that refuses to extoll the virtues
of the power of oneness most ubiquitously-unique.
I am resolute in my need and desire to make each
holiday more about my vacation from the phony-forces
of everyday social life by celebrating cerebal solitude.
Bah-humbug indeed, no matter what the season. For it is
within, in the world underneath that one truly can
commune with a much higher reason.
The power of one. I am the power of one. I am one
with power. I turn inside. I do not hide. Where there
once was shame now there is only pride. There is joy in
the pain that I face in sitting to the beat of my own
drummer each holiday in the window of my soul.
© A.J. Mahari - October 8, 2000
as of October 8, 2000
