I just want to scream and punch meat...like Rocky

I am usually a huge fan of the holiday season. I like the lights and the decorations and that warm, fuzzy feeling you get when it's cold and you've made a big pot of soup or chili. There's hot chocolate and the Grinch and a general feeling of the happy lovies....this year, I'm not feeling it at all. In fact, I'm starting to understand the statistic of how suicides increase during the holidays.

Don't worry, I'm not feeling suicidal...yet...I just am having the feeling of  a large elephant standing on my chest or maybe standing behind me, ready to charge. I have no job.....no income, and I lost my grandmother this year, a lady who kind of personified our family holidays. It's a sad thing when you are the child of only children, and you lose your dad and your grandmother in the span of three years.

I'm not asking anyone...at ALL, to feel sorry for me, I do that well enough, but so many things about the holiday season were defined through my dad and my grandmother. My dad once hung sleigh bells..or, just bells, I guess, outside mine and my sister's windows, he wrote cursive notes from Santa, because he never wrote cursive anywhere else, he spent hours assembling trampolines, bikes, and basketball goals on Christmas Eve, after we were ordered to bed.

My grandmother made the best dressing every year (although my sister did an equally excellent job this year, God bless her), she always got us the best presents, and she made chocolate chess pie, which I tried to replicate a couple of years ago and failed miserably...Last Christmas, about seven months before she died, she cracked up my niece and nephew by trying to stick her tongue to her nose, since they had discovered whether or not they could do it. Imagine, a 91-year-old person trying to stick her tongue to her nose for about 15 minutes....and she never thought she was funny....

You have all these memories of holidays and Christmases past, and they're so good. I used to climb in bed with my sister on Christmas morning after we looked at our toys, and I cried, thinking about that, when she got married, even though I was 16 and we didn't really do that anymore, I knew we never could. I remember when I was about 11, when we got a Nintendo. I set my alarm and used my Barbie flashlight to investigate...and I ran in her room, and shook her, whisper-yelling, "We got Nintendo! We got Nintendo!" I am assuming that when you have kids, that joy returns to Christmas. Maybe one day, I'll experience that.

For now, I am hoping that the new year brings better things for me. This year has been an albatross, and I wish to free it....how do you do that?