mi december

Christmas has always been an incredibly special time of year for me. I have so many memories of Christmases, and spending Christmas almost alone this year is killing me inside. Yes, I'll see a friend in Barcelona tomorrow evening, but that's almost the entire Christmas holiday alone two weeks after a birthday alone. Something has got to give.

Today, memories have been flashing back to me in a wave of melancholy. Memories of elementary school parties and high school Christmas card exchanges, when I used to like my mom's family Christmas. My mom and my tradition of having Swiss steak for dinner and opening just one present. Covering Fallon Fey in wrapping paper Christmas morning, Cinnamon rolls for breakfast. How every year I wanted snow. Some years I got it. Some years I didn't. The year of the ice storm which caused our electric to go out. We went to see The Phantom of the Opera (which ruined the musical) and stayed at a hotel on the 23rd. We got lucky and the electric came on that morning. It was a weird Christmas, and yet it was already five years ago. Growing up having to go to Kentucky for my mom's Christmas every year. Sometimes on Christmas Day. Sometimes before. Sometimes after. The one year when we went at 8 p.m. and arrived at 2 a.m. to avoid a snow storm, and the only Marathon being open between Cincinnati and Louisville. I remember hearing the new Wynonna song for the first time that night. Watching Love Actually and While You Were Sleeping every year. The wait for peppermint mocha at Starbucks. I always somehow woke up after Papa Noel came and went to look at all the presents underneath the tree. I even miss sneaking Pepsi and cookies behind my mom's back for Papa Noel. And I love getting presents, as most of us do. But that really isn't want I'm missing right now, as much as I could use a new MacBook pro underneath a tree.

I'm missing tradition. I know as we get older, traditions change. This is my second Christmas in a row away from home. Last year, it was hard, but I was also in line waiting to see Pope Homophobus MXCLII in my first midnight mass on Christmas Eve. (I'm not even sure I'm a Christian any more this year to be honest.) And I might be going to Barcelona tomorrow to be with a really good friend, but that doesn't change how lonely I am today. It doesn't erase the fact that things are changing, I'm getting older. And I know it takes time to establish myself, as I am trying to immigrate permanently to Spain.

I'm craving a relationship and maybe a family of my own. I'm now 28, and I've never had a real boyfriend. And I'm wondering if that's going to ever happen for me. Yeah, some may say I'm still young, but it is pretty damn old for someone who admitted he was gay when he was 19 to not have had one. How much do I crave making a life and traditions of my own with someone?

It hurts me to know that if I were to come out to my mom, the rejection I would face. How much it will hurt her. How even if I ever did find a boyfriend how he would not be accepted at my mom's family Christmas. And how I don't even want to go to one of her family Christmas's again after this summer when my uncle mocked me and my passion for Spain. How fragile is my self-esteem already without being told to "just go to a damn drive thru at Taco Bell if I wanted to have Spanish flavour." (I won't bother going on a rant right now about how that's not even Mexican, let alone SPANISH. In Spain, a taco is a swear word, or año, ie tengo 28 tacos.)

Reject them before they reject me. Something I've been doing ever since realising I was gay in 2001. I have constructed a pretty high wall that needs to come crumbling down, but I'm unable to do it.

On top of all of this, I have fallen for a friend who I would love to be celebrating Christmas with. Instead, I'm quite certain he's "Just not that into me" in a "more-than-friends" way. Once again, the friend and not the boyfriend. Amor no correspondido. And I ache...I don't know whether for him or the idea of him. The idea of someone. The idea of love.

I cry for all this today. Christmas can be an incredibly hard time of year. It can bring back painful memories. I always ached for something more at Christmas. A real family, not two parents who despised each other. Maybe I've always been searching for something that was never expressed to me in a proper manner my entire life, love. Unconditional love. Have I ever truly felt it?

Maybe next year at this time, I'll be in a stable relationship with an amazing guy who understands me, in a place where I'm relatively happy with myself, and I'll find the Christmas spirit that's been missing since 2007. I can feel the special feeling this time of year normally brings instead of the pain and misery it's bringing this year. This year...bah humbug.

Current Music: December Makes Me Feel This Way by Dave Koz