when you believe

I am a mess, literally. From my apartment to my desk to my car. A big hot mess as my friends from the South might say. Not that there's anything to really be a mess about, for the most part life is good, my career is on the right track, I've new hobbies and interests that are stretching boundaries and allowing me to meet interesting people. And yet, I feel off, disconnected. Not quite right.

My emotional heart leans toward the mystery, the unknown but my rational mind knows the answer: The season tis the reason. The holiday season, that is, as opposed to say winter. There was once a time that I enjoyed the holy holly days, where I relished the light spirit and giving heart that would come to three-dimensional life in and out of every day. In recent years though, the season has lost its luster. I think it may have started after mom passed. She died three weeks into the new year, and that last six weeks of celebration were tainted with sadness. It's been nearly 13 years, and I had hoped (prayed even) that the sadness would fade, replaced by a sort of kind of happiness. Something I could subtly detect. But I find instead that the melancholy, which lies dormant all the other months, appears earlier and earlier each year.

I miss the magic of what Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Years represented. If my father were to read this post, he might suggest (or adamantly insist) that visitation to Sunday mass would fix that, the perfect cure. And he might be right, the power of spiritual prayer, believing in the unseen, can have profound affects on someone.

For me though it runs wider than that toward the simplicity of life... the early childhood education classes, the folly of ice skating parties and snowball fights, the echoes of laughter among a gathering of friends and family, the breaking of bread and sharing of food, sometimes across days. Toward the innocent joy of being young, wearing rose-colored glasses and believing, in Santa, in everyone and everything.