I tried to keep myself busy today. Worked on a Christmas essay. Watched a documentary on the life of Flannery O'Connor. Took my puppy for a few walks, freezing my ass off in the process. Took a picture of a snowperson. Played pipe organ for a Saturday evening Mass. Had dinner with my sisters.
If you can't tell, I'm trying to keep my mind engaged to avoid the blue mood I wrote about last night. Now that I'm settling down for the night, however, it's sitting on the couch beside me, begging for attention.
Billy Collins thinks about the person he loves . . .
Elusive
by: Billy Collins
As I was wandering the city this morning
working on my impression of Michael Caine,
I began to think about her again--
which makes it sound as if she were far away
or lost in the past or possibly both.
But I was with her only an hour ago,
and later I will sit in the kitchen
and watch her hair hiding her face
as she stirs some onions and butter in a skillet
and I pour us a glass of frosty white wine.
Still, she has been known to vanish
as if in a mist as we walk past
a row of store windows, or she will disappear
behind a hedge or into a side room at a party.
And often no aisle of the supermarket reveals her.
Like the fox, she is nowhere and everywhere,
a tail of fire out of the corner of my eye,
one of the corners she likes to turn
just as the streetlights are coming on
when I am searching for her in the evening crowd.
Would she and Michael Caine hit it off,
I wondered as I emerged from an alley
only to see her staring at me from a spot on a public bench.
My wife once told me that she has to read my blog to find out what's really going on in my head. I guess that means that I'm sort of elusive, too.
It's true that I don't often talk about my bouts of sadness much, except with my therapist. I've always thought that I don't need to burden my loved ones with my mental health problems. Too many people depend on me to be even-tempered, happy, and in control. I don't like letting anyone down.
I've learned to mask these struggles really well, perhaps out of some stupid masculine stereotype that a "real" man needs to be strong all the time. Usually, only those closest to me know when I'm in the throes of one of my depressions. It's harder for me to concentrate and be around large groups of people. At night, I withdraw, become uncommunicative or short-tempered. I don't even want to be around me.
So why am I coming clean this time?
Because I know that the holidays are difficult for lots of individuals out there. Think about it. Every famous Christmas movie or book or TV special is about family and togetherness, taking care of the less fortunate, angels getting their wings, Ralphie receiving his official Red Ryder, carbine-action, two-hundred-shot, range model air rifle, with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time.
But for most folks, this version of the holidays just doesn't exist. To paraphrase Charles Dickens, at this time of the rolling year, want is keenly felt. So are grief and hunger and isolation. Maybe by me writing about my own particular experience with sadness, a person who happens on this post might feel a little less alone this holiday season.
At least, that's Saint Marty's hope.
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