Descending and Emerging

Solstice, the Holidays, and Faith in the Present Moment.

(Content Warning: This post engages with the topics of suicide, alcoholism, and eating disorders)

Whenever Christmas gets close, I think of my mother. Not that I don’t think of her often, nearly every day, otherwise. But during the holidays I remember all my holidays with her, how disastrous they always were— her getting blackout drunk, us fighting. The last few years before her suicide were the worst, when her drinking was at a fever pitch. There was that restaurant in Denver, Christmas night, when she called me a stupid little bitch. I left her sitting alone at the table, guilt saturating my chest and lungs, suffocating me. All night she sent texts, my stepfather, from whom she’d gotten divorced, sent me texts. What do you expect, to be treated like gold? She asked over text. And my stepdad: how could you just leaver her there? She’s in the hotel bar, crying. I’d escaped to a bar, too. Across town.

Every Christmas, ever since I was little, I was responsible for my mother’s feelings. …