Happy Holidays to you and yours.
Yes I know they are winding to a close, maybe I am late in my well wishes, your endeavors have already gone the way they would with or without my blessing, maybe I am just in time. I try not to think too much about timing my meager existential purpose within the will of the universe. I just try and do what feels right.
This season, what felt right was my room full of candles. My Christmas is celebrated with friends and family on boxing day, that is, Dec 26th. So I wait through the 24th, the 25th, traditions long past: opening pyjama's on christmas eve to sleep in while waiting for Santa, A house full of merriment and presents on Christmas day, with a hot meal and a nice drink... or two. Traditions that I am hoping one day soon I will hold dear again. These days I wait until the boxing day, when most families have celebrated with their priorities, and I am finally invited to gather in festivities. I spend the holidays alone, by choosing, you must understand. I want for nothing, crave nothing, even the wisps of longing don't hold me down like they would some people on such a people oriented day. Denny's was open, that was nice. Kind of a mini-tradition. The long of the short of it, is I am excited for the day I get to start making those traditions again. You would think, being married for 12 years, would have been enough time to start something... but with the wrong person, it is not. It is not lost on me, that I may be that wrong person, who doesn't get as enthusiastic as some homemakers, who doesn't force memories to be made; that is neither here nor there.
What I did decide to do this year, which is my reason for sharing, is that is did hit me, that while most of the world is self absorbed in their little world of traditions, they leave you as fast as they came when the person you shared them with is gone. For that reason I wanted to start something new. Maybe something that reached beyond me and my solitude. So I did. I didn't wait for a calling, or someone to share with, I just decided too. The wine has helped me decide that there may be people out there that need to be part of it, so I am sharing.
I have lit a candle for you.
This may seem all encompassing, overtly grand, or just arrogant on my part, but I think it applies here. For me, I do not fill my life with many people. More so than not, no one becomes part of my world, by my choice. I am not exciting, I am not enlightening, I just am. So for me, I do not think anyone cares if I don't speak about the things I do. I am trying to change that, so I have my little haven of a blog where I write the random things. But I digress.
I have lit about 15 candles this Christmas. No tree, no tinsel, just a mantle with some candles; one day I will pay them more tribute. In 2020, this is what I could do. they each represent someone to me. I lit one for the 2 Fathers I have known that have died from COVID since Thanksgiving, I suppose they are the ones who got me started on this, they deserved to be remembered, not by their family... but by someone they had no idea existed, before, during, or after their lifetime. Theirs children knew, possibly passed along, that someone out there in the world was rooting for them, thinking about them. Someone they have never met, someone who isn't invested in their success or failures. Just someone. Someone cares. I suppose they are the two who started this for me. So I lit the candles. I lit one for a friend, who is battling oppression constantly - this carried over from a few months past, but I did not want to forget. I wanted to put that energy out into the world. For anyone who had taken Chemistry 110 - everything you put into the world has to be used somewhere, so I put that energy out there. As I said, I don't have a large group of people, so 2 people dying of this darn disease is a pretty large percentage... but I digress. Next I lit a candle for my best friend who is going through a bad divorce, she finally got that warrant for her ex, so that is some great news, and she absolutely knows I am rooting for her... but sometime words get lost and mean nothing more than the words once spoken, then gone. So I committed to the action of it.
I did not stop there. I lit many candles, space savers. I am not naïve enough to think that there are not so many people out there that could use that positive energy. The energy of creation, chemical alchemy and turning a thought into an action that makes its impact on the physical world. Though I did not know who I was lighting them for. I wanted to. I wanted others to know that there is someone out there, someone you have never met, who is rooting for you, who thinks you deserve to succeed and thinks that things should get better for you.
I thought of many. Some who have lost mothers this year, grandmothers or children in the past. I made sure to light a candle for them, but not be entitled to assume they would need my help. Perhaps they do not need the light I have created, and thus, it can go to someone else, someone who needs it more. Either way, I lit these candles for you.
Third, I lit a candle for a good friend from high school who lost her battle with a lifetime of complications with her health. She, I suppose, is the one who got me to write this post. I did not know she would die on Dec 24th, when I lit them, but in lighting them, I had lit her one.
So just know, I have many candles lit on my mantle today. If you need one, or think that there is no one invested that cares about you and yours, you are wrong. Please feel free to claim one of these candles for your own. They each belong to someone. If it is you, then know that you are doing you best, someone unaffiliated with you life wishes you well, and the world is not all about those you have given something to "owing" you, it is about unbias love and support. You are worth it to someone, they were worth it to someone, without having to do a thing to 'earn' it. You were enough.
Thank you for being here with me through my raw and unfiltered ramblings of someone sipping wine by her fire place, filled with candles to keep her company.
~Oracle
