notes from the road

My body has, for the last five days, not been sure of anything: the day of the week, the month, the time. I keep sleeping too late. I keep thinking I have more days in Buffalo. Christmas decorations and commercials keep taking me by surprise: Oh, right, I thought on Thursday, it's only now actually Christmas.

I am sick of eggnog.

I've been living out of my suitcase for more than two weeks now. I dream that classes have started and no one's told me, that classes started and I'm still in New York.

Here's how to best say it: I feel off. Uneven. Maybe it's the traveling. Maybe it's the pressure there always is--never actively or externally applied, but there nonetheless--to have Christmas be The Best Possible Vacation, and so any off moments make me feel guilty. I feel bad for being snappy three mornings in a row to my family. I feel bad for not being able to sleep well in strange beds. I feel bad for being my usual train-wreck self. And then I feel bad for feeling bad, which is hilarious when you consider that the people I'm around right now, when I'm feeling bad and snappy and snippy and guilty--these people have known me for my entire life. Years. They are my family. They witnessed me cutting my own bangs with sticky kitchen scissors when I was far old enough to know better* and they saw me throw ferocious, violent teenage-girl tantrums throughout most of the nineties and early two-thousands. They have brought me buckets to keep at the side of my bed during some late nights and they have watched me dissolve into tears at the sight of a burnt bagel. Possibly even sometime this week.

In other words, maybe I should stop feeling so fucking guilty for being exactly who I am, because the only one it's surprising is me. They know exactly who I am. They know what to expect from me because I am nothing if not predictable in my emotional, uneven state.

This may be one of my favorite things about them.

The B keeps reminding me that I say every Christmas that I'm ruining it. I know he's right. But I also know that there's something about this time of year that makes me feel like it needs to be right. The funny thing is, it's never perfect. It's never going to be perfect. And it's a lot of time to waste worrying about something that is only my second-favorite holiday. I'm much more partial to Thanksgiving. I like the timing of it best: it marks the beginning of the holiday season. It's the perfect break to a long fall, and it offers a nice reprieve before you head back into the last weeks of the semester. There's a lot of food on Thanksgiving, so you don't have to worry too much about any one thing, possible exception of the gravy. And I've always liked the weather: cold, but snow still seems attractive and novel. Christmas and its bitchy younger sister, New Year's, just make me feel like I've run out of time, that I didn't do enough. Oh my god, they're always saying. It's nearly a new year. Haven't you managed to get your shit together yet?

Tomorrow we're leaving Buffalo, bound for Ohio, and please don't get me wrong--I enjoyed myself here. We toured a basilica, toasted with wine, ran the dog, watched a lot of the Discovery Channel and many movies. We sat around more than a few tables and caught up, we mocked the Survivorman, and we read. When we arrived in town it was through a snow squall, and yesterday it was nearly sixty degrees. Much of each day was merry and bright and filled with good food, good people. And that's what I need to remember as I zip up my big black suitcase and aim the car west and wave goodbye: that if every holiday was some sort of smashing success on my part, that if I arrived in good form and kept my composure and didn't drink too much wine and could actually be bothered to blow-dry my hair for family pictures--well, I guess it wouldn't be very accurate to who I am. At the very least, if I did it all right in 2008, I'd have to spend the rest of my life trying to always make it right. And that just sounds like a hell of a lot of work.

Pass the Laphroaig.



* tenth grade, to be exact