Melancholic Merry Christmas

This has been the first good Christmas for me in years. But it’s also been very melancholic and full of different, even opposite, intense emotions. 

This month of December has been rough, a roller-coaster of feelings, often difficult ones, with a lot of loneliness and fear of the holidays. 

The end of the semester with its more than usual extreme/dichotomic reactions from the students was rough, almost too intense to be bearable. 

The extra loneliness and sadness I felt as the holidays were approaching was also unbearable, but then fortunately things turned around as I was (& am being) showered with & wrapped up in love and support from friends — (geographically) near & far — as well as neighbors, climbing buddies, and acquaintances from the queer community. I can feel the warm love, and it feels wonderful. Compared to last year’s holidays and several recent holidays or holidays as an adult back in Europe, this Christmastime has been so much better, so much lovelier. And yet also so much more melancholic and even sad, mainly because of my losses from this summer feeling sharper again now. 

This is the first Christmas without my father — not just for me — I hadn’t really had Christmas with my dad in years — but especially for my mother (& sister). The last time I saw my dad alive, in person, was during the Christmas holidays eight years ago, three weeks before I left Europe and moved to California. That memory has been coming back to me very sharply now. And with it the memories of my father’s final hospitalization and death this summer, and of my European queer ex-lover’s support to me, a partner’s support, in those days. And thus also a renewed longing for my European queer ex-lover again. 

All of this mixed with the sense of being at home here, of having finally found home in this corner of Colorado. A lovely, warm feeling but also somewhat confusing or concerning because of my professional uncertainty. Which is starting to haunt and worry me again. 

And then the memories of last year’s holidays, so lonely, so isolated, as all that I was waiting for was my gender-affirming top-surgery for which the one-year anniversary will be in precisely one month. So much has happened, so much has changed since then… 

So much, so much… 

So many deep, intense, even contradictory emotions for me to hold in this melancholic merry Christmas…