Wednesday 24 December 2003

Tears and irreverence

Christmas Eve is not my favourite day of the year.  In fact its probably the very worst day of the year for me.  I always, every year, have a massive mood-plummet that takes me beyond not mere feeling blue, a little down, just out of sorts ... it goes full bore into Major Depression mode.  Not fun to experience, not fun to be around; so I tend to spend Christmas Eves holed up on my own somewhere, asleep or trying to sleep, not wishing to force others to endure my icky, ugly, inadequate, unfit-to-live self.

I don't know what brings it on; I know Christmas can be a bad time for many people because of the materialism and commercialism, plus the emotional crapola, you know the kind of thing - its that time of year when you're forced to look at the year/s past, there's all this family stuff going on, emotional baggage, wondering if you measure up, looking at what you have/haven't achieved.  And in my family in particular its always been a time of heightened emotional drama, more melodramatics and chaos than usual, people putting on fake happy faces, ergo not a peaceful time at all.  So there's years of conditioning for me to have developed my Pre Xmas Blues (PXB). 

For some reason, in Belfast, I didn't get even the slightest hint of PXB.  Obviously because I wasn't around MY family, in MY home town, etc.  Also Christmas seemed so real in a way its just not in the Southern Hemisphere, no matter how long you've lived there it still seems surreal to be celebrating this winter pagan festival in 38C heat with pounding sun and brilliant blue skies and kookaburras going insane at sunrise.  Christmas with cold, and snow, real honest to goodness snow, was real.  So despite the ongoing crapola, some homesickness, and getting a bit shook up over all the heavily armed cops and army guys swarming the streets, I had good Christmases in Belfast.  No blues. 

I guess I had three years worth to make up ... consider it done.  I spent most of Christmas Eve-Eve and today either in floods of tears, sobbing-crying, or trying not to cry.  I feel like such a failure, a complete and utter fuck-up of the highest order.  I look back over the last two/three years, and at where Tuxedo and I are today, and I can't help but think all the crap stuff that's happened, and the unsettled and unsettling situation we find ourselves in now is all due to me, all my fault.  I fucked up. 

I hate the "ifs" and "if onlys" game, its so pointless, and I am trying not to play it ... but if I had settled in to life in Belfast, if I'd got my visa and been able to work, if my physical condition hadn't deteriorated, if I hadn't been sick and bedridden all the fucking time, if I'd been able to build a life there, we wouldn't now be so badly financially strained, wouldn't be living with my parents, feeling stressed, unsettled, disjointed/disoriented and worried all the time.

So ... its not my fault - if its any one person/thing's fault then its the UK Immigration Department, no question, closely followed by the NHS ... but I can't help but keep bludgeoning myself over the head with it all, branding myself a failure and fuck-up, useless for anything, someone who hasn't done anything useful or productive for three years, who has just existed ... and fucked up some more.  Even worse, fucked up someone else's life in the process.

Tuxedo has no patience with any of this, and fair play to him.  He doesn't focus on problems, only solutions, nor can he see the point in looking back over the past and castigating oneself over shit one couldn't do anything about at the time anyway, let alone months/years after the event.  So, he's impatient and angry with me for being upset and depressed, which doesn't really help ... He knows I'm not a fuck-up or a failure, its just circumstance - yes, its a bad situation we're in but its not my FAULT, get over it already ...

I wish I could, I really really wish I could get over it.  But like the whole health thing - which I'm also flagellating myself with - I'm having an impossible time dealing with it, accepting it, moving on. 

ARGH.  I just wish it would all just stop, fer crissakes.  I wish Tuxedo and I could cop a break.

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In spite of all this angst and pain and bilge,  I ended up, most surprisingly, having the best Xmas Eve EVER.  I hereby patent, to the entire human race, the best way to spend Xmas Eve:-

- one picnic, comprising spicy lamb kebabs, salad, cheeses, a bottle of vodka and a carton of orange juice;

- one glorious warm and balmy night, not a cloud in the sky;

- one beautiful and very special park, with smooth lawn, trees, ponds, fountains, many many birds;

- one viewing at an outdoor cinema in aforementioned park, of Monty Python's "Life of Brian"; so appropriate to Christmas Eve, dontcha know, taking the piss as it does out of Christianity and organised religion, with lots of zany humour and well known one-liners and a catchy singalong at the end.

How wonderfully irreverent and laidback and fun and superb is that?  I tell you, I feel so much better now, sitting here typing this late at night post-movie (and some hours post-writing the above angst fest), post-amazing sex, still rather squiffy on exceedingly strong screwdrivers.  I feel GOOD.  I feel especially good because Tuxedo had a fantastic time, found the outdoor cinema and picnic concept absolutely magical and fun and amazing and so totally new.  He loved it, and he is happy to live in Perth.  THAT my friends, is the best Christmas present I can receive; that my fella is happy to live in the place to which I have dragged him.

Mind you, it is a pretty special place, really it is the lucky country indeed ... and a long long way from shite weather, the truly fucked-up socio-political mess that is Northern Ireland and its bombs and violence and closed-up people.  A long long way.  

Merry Christmas.

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