“Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store. What if Christmas...perhaps...means a little bit more!”

~ Dr. Seuss
From How the Grinch Stole Christmas

To take a break from all the news of people being shot, I thought it would be cool to give a little Christmas consolation.

This is the second Christmas since I had my breakdown. That last Christmas was hell. I visited a bunch of family in rural Washington and just sat and listened to their conversation - not saying a word but listening with almost nothing to say. One cousin consoled me by telling me about living in Barcelona and how living in Spain it was "impossible to do anything." It was depressing and no small part of that was the neurosis of thinking things are darker than they are.

My cousin was nice but it got worse at home.One of my mother's ex-boyfriends came in to the picture. This asshole insulted me viciously right in front of me - he had heard the descriptions of my SSRI withdrawal behavior, I guess, and that was enough for him to make a full of assessment of my character despite having not known me for more than a few months my whole life.

It was the worst Christmas ever. I felt demoralized and beaten as a person. I had only graduated college months before. I didn't really know how to be an adult yet. I felt like dying. I really did. I had been a student and a dependent son most of my life.

When you've been a student and dependent your entire life, it is really easy to live for yourself. You are insulated from the real world and its true nature. I got baptized shortly after and attended church regularly for a brief period (I hope to go back soon) and one of the speakers said something really profound - "If you're despondent, you're probably thinking about yourself."

The real world - not the student or child world, which I'd lived in so long - is built on delivering people's needs. Money just lubricates that - you can be successful in your community without making much or any money if you are somehow delivering services to others. It would have been nice to know it was that simple earlier.

I spent the year after that horrible Christmas not wasting time - though my best friend, who bizarrely was also living in Seattle after an unsuccessful living experience in Asia (India for him), said it seemed like that was what I was doing - but training myself mentally for what I had learned. Alot of the writing I did here, which I can imagine may have been annoying for readers expecting stuff about current events, was trying to do that. So was starting a community mental health group on Facebook that is now pushing almost 100 members.

I didn't go and visit family this year. My family visited me. My mother and her new boyfriend came by and there were many more smiles. The jokes didn't have the sting to them. I introduced them to housemates. It was beautiful. I got a rice cooker and a T-shirt that really saved the day - an "Oakland, California - Established 1852" T-shirt. (I have spent at least several months a year in the Bay Area for most of my life.)

I still felt a lot of guilt. I felt like a bad son for all the hell I'd put others and myself through. I was scared of the world and myself. Maybe that guilt is a good thing though. I knew the needs of my family were to know that the combined limbs that form that genetic octopus were all healthy and intact - and alot of the hostility I'd received were because I had been acting in a way that was threatening to the life of the familial octopus.

Even though this Christmas was a small affair, it was the best one yet. Christmas follows the rules of the world - it not only fills the physical needs of people (by giving one another presents), it fills the emotional needs of people. Everyone needs the family octopus to be healthy - and this year it was.

God bless everyone at Dagblog!