the day after christmas.

when I was a little girl, Christmas was easily my favorite holiday.  Not just because of the presents - although that was certainly a big part of it - but because it was this one day each year where everyone was happy, light-hearted, and carefree.  When we all ate good food and nothing could really go wrong - how could anything go wrong, when surrounded by loved ones and good cheer? 

The day after Christmas, though, was my least favorite day of the year.  For me, the feeling of the "day after" would begin as coffee was served after Christmas dessert - signaling the end of the meal and thus, the end of a beautiful day.  I never wanted it to end, because tomorrow we would have to continue about our normal lives, and deal with the realities of life that we had forgotten about for this one day.  So on the day after Christmas I was in an inevitable funk, a depression I couldn't lift myself from.  I dreaded the idea of waiting another full year for that same feeling of joy I felt on Christmas.  I'd cry the whole day, filled with such an inexplicable anguish that alarmed anyone not immediately acquainted with my behaviors.

today, I no longer cry the day after Christmas.  I outgrew that reaction early on in my teenage years.  However, I have not outgrown the deep depression I feel at the end of, say, a wonderful vacation, or a visit from a wonderful friend I don't see enough.  I begin to suffocate with the idea that I will never experience something so incredible again - that maybe I won't again be able to afford that vacation, or that special friend and I will have a falling out and lose what made our friendship - and the visit - so enormously meaningful.  The "day after Christmas phenomenon," as my mother sardonically calls it, is very well alive in me right now.  And it's literally making me crazy.

it doesn't much help that now I really have to get cracking on moving to NYC, but I know that doing so is going to make me feel better.  I'll feel better once I'm in New York and, in a way, closer to the things that mean the most to me.  I feel disconnected and far away, and it isn't helping me one bit.  I'm terribly afraid of being forgotten, or getting lost in the shuffle, but maybe once I get up there I can better plant my feet and feel more secure in some of the choices I've made.

but in the meantime, I can only hope that the day after Christmas feeling passes.