December…

A month synonymous with salubrious cheer, sparkling ornaments, rosy-cheeked smiles, mirthful carols accompanied by jingling bells, the scent of pine mingling with hot chocolate and homemade cookies…

December is the hardest month of the year for me.

For years, I avoided returning to my childhood home. Once the boots of adulthood fit just snug enough to make me question whether I wanted to walk in them for the rest of my life, I decided to tradition a yearly appearance at that damn house on Avenue Chauveau, the one cozied between the old lady with the dumb blind dog, and the couple who I’m pretty sure were breeding pups illegally. Maybe the blind dog of one neighbor inspired the unlawful coupling of the others…

Think about it.

But as I was saying, once I reached the age where guilt could no longer be swept under a rug of precocious, adolescent ignorance, I bended to my mother’s pleas and started going back home.

Once a year: Christmas time.

When I walked through the door for the first time in close to half a decade, and glimpsed the pristine kitchen (now oddly rococo-ed in religious art), all I could think about was cemeteries.

Who thinks about cemeteries on Christmas? That’s totally fucked up.

The truth is, cemeteries have forever fascinated me.

Akin to the whisper of a lurid secret, cemeteries tantalize with the dark romance of untold stories.

Tombstones, hauntingly magnetic, are like waves reaching to the sky – concrete ladders carrying newly freed souls to the heavens where Faustian bribes are kibitzed for entrance, leaving now expired flesh hosts six feet below the ground.

Notice how I didn’t capitalize “heavens”; I did however capitalize “Faustian.”

Again. Totally fucked up.

The practice of burying corpses six feet below the ground was implemented in London, during the Great Plague of 1665. The burial depth ensured that diseased bodies would not infect the living. Additionally, it kept scavengers and body snatchers at bay.

The first night of my return, I laid uncomfortably in this thing my mom called a bed as she opted for the living room couch. I just couldn’t sleep, partly because the crowd of Jesus faces on the walls were freaking the shit out of me, but mostly, because returning to the house of my first steps have led me to examine the labyrinth that, in effect, has brought me to newfound clarity.

I had spun such poetic lies to support me avoiding coming home. I convinced myself that my absence was an assertion of independence – I was forging my path, making my mark.

I was full of shit.

The darkness of my mother’s room forced me to admit that the cold, shirking behavior I had exerted towards my childhood home was one that I had been employing regularly.

December…

Six feet under. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out.

I had been living as an emotional corpse, buried six feet under a fear that began growing the moment the wrong hand hit me.

If I don’t open up and don’t let myself be vulnerable, I can never be hurt.

If I keep everyone at a distance, they’ll never discern the cracks. They’ll never exchange me for something “intact.”

If I am the one who walks away, no one will ever walk away from me.

If I don’t go home, I never have to admit that what happened there broke me.

Six feet under. Nothing gets in. Nothing gets out.

That night, I realized that I had buried myself under emotional reflexes that could only earn me Pyrrhic victories.

Six feet under was not where I wanted to live.

So, as the moon bowed to the sun, I concluded that I would, from that day on, make a conscious effort to step into my fears instead of running from them.

I’ve since learned how to fight the impulse to run and hide like an ostrich lacking depth perception, after sharing pieces of myself. I can now control the vertigo that taunts me after admitting that I need and/or feel strongly for another. I can actually say “I miss you” without feeling like I just signed away my heart to some sheisty one-eyed leprechaun to sell in the back room of a sex store. A sex store for one-eyed leprechauns.

Like a scar that can only be covered by day, my fears will probably always find ways to manifest themselves, but at least now, I know how to tame them.

And ride them like a fucking bull.

I still only go home once a year. It still makes me…let’s call it grumpy. However, it no longer makes me think of cemeteries. And with every passing year, the monsters that once plagued and dictated my behavior, become easier and easier to face.

Except for the Jesus posters. Those still freak the fuck out of me.

And there are more of those every year.

Ah December…