Now the Season is upon us.
Went to a friend's big Christmas party last night. Only single person there. Everyone drinking and laughing and having fun, and wives sitting on their husbands' laps looking so happy and perfect.
I left and came home to my cold room filled with dozens of lifeless plastic people looking out at me. Another Christmas alone. I'll never know what it's like to watch my children open presents under the tree. I'll never have children or a wife. Or a tree.
I'm not a big fan of Christmas. Nothing against it although the commercialism is crass, of course. But I sort of outgrew it. I don't know who said we must be doing this or that on Christmas, but my favourite thing is to read a book and ignore it. That's just me and my preference, but in a broader sense I just wonder about all the cultural programming we're subject to.
I've been single, dating, not-dating, co-habiting (mutliple times) and almost got married once. That line about 'looking so happy and perfect' jumped out at me.
Nothing ever is. Whatever situation we're in, we trade one set of problems for another. I'm not trying to be nihilistic, quite the opposite -- there is joy to be found in almost every situation (within reason) and surely you know that whatever things look like from outside aren't indicative of the day-to-day...my last relationship looked great from the outside and sure, at one time it was. Blew everyone's minds when the 'power couple' broke up.
There's no place you arrive and stay at, you just live your life and deal with change.
Despair lies in comparisons. As someone said, look inside yourself and don't worry about what everyone else is or isn't doing.
People get married late in life, some don't get married at all...there was one relationship where I thought we would have kids. Some years later I'm sure glad we didn't.
We don't know how things look from the inside, and we never know how things will end up, so given those twin mysteries, other peoples' lives or what I "should" be doing are irrelevant to me; I try to focus on things that I know will fulfill me and again as someone else said, I intentionally step outside of my comfort zone from time to time so I can get exposure to things I normally wouldn't, and these days ... I'm careful what I wish for.