Broken

The holiday season is tough for me. I'm old enough, and still have enough of a brain to recall many many happy holiday memories. I'm a hopeless victim of my past I suppose, and enough of a realist to accept that most of my life has already been lived.

I spent Thanksgiving with my Dad's second wife (it's too strange to call her a step-mother, so I never have.) and she's 20+ years older than me, and happily in good health. She is the oldest living member of my family, all of the others have since passed. I asked about what she thought of the world we live in today, and how she thought it compared to decades past. In my mind, I've felt like the world has just gotten worse for the last twenty years. She suggested that there has always been problems, just different problems.

That makes sense to me.

My Grandmother was the sweetest person I had ever known as a little boy. I remember once when I was very young that I had spent a number of days with her, and the day I was picked up by my parents and brought home, I cried because I wanted to stay at my Grandmother's house. They actually drove me back, and I stayed another night. She was that much of a influence on a little boy. As she got older, and we all grew up she changed. She became more bitter, more demanding, and felt that everyone owed her their time. I became convinced in the years preceding her death that she had gone insane.

I bring this up, because I can distance myself away from myself enough to sometimes (though only sometimes) make unbiased observations. One of these observations has been that I find myself becoming more bitter, less frequently happy, and I wonder if maybe I'm going insane as well.

This website is full of memories of my life and if you've read anything I've posted here, I think it's pretty obvious that I've had a dysfunctional life. I immediately think 'everybody's life is dysfunctional in one way or the other.' and I do truly believe that. It's just it feels like I've had more than my share of issues. That's not looking for pity, only saying 'Some of us aren't as fortunate, or lucky as others.'

I can honestly say that I've forgotten how to maintain any semblance of happiness. Now, I absolutely feel happy pretty frequently, especially after no longer being in an incredibly toxic relationship that ended this year, that had lasted a full 25% of my entire life. Without that constant stress of the insanity of that relationship, the biggest challenge has been not seeing my Daughter who I love more than life itself. I pray to God that 2026 will put us back together as often as possible. But that relationship damaged me, without a doubt. It's easy to say 'She kept me angry, and unhappy for so long I forgot how to be happy.'

But that's a cop-out. I know how to be happy, it's just that enough scar tissue has built up that I've found it's almost impossible to maintain that happiness for any mentionable period of time.

It may be that's just normal, as you get older, maybe it's just what happens.

Still, I feel broken, and I'm hopeful that next year will be better than this one has been.

I can't end up like my Grandmother, hateful, deceitful, entitled. But what if I already am, and just haven't realized it?

I spoke with a Therapist earlier this year, and did for months. I looked forward to those weekly chats more than I can describe. Someone I didn't know, someone that didn't know 'me' but listened, and offered unbiased, professional suggestions. She made a real difference in my life. I stopped taking meds that had been helping, and when our final session was completed. It felt like I was saying goodbye to a friend. We weren't friends, obviously, but she helped me more than I could describe. I haven't talked to her in nearly six months, and I miss those chats, I feel like I'm slipping back into the depression I was consumed by before I began talking to her. It's partially the holidays, it's partially STILL waiting for the legal process to complete so that I'll be able to see my Daughter again, it's partially the disappointment of having moved halfway across the country with a set of expectations that have not come to pass.

I want 2026 to be better in every possible way, I just need to get past these holidays, and then focus on one day at a time. I hope the posts I make here will reflect a better year for me, and I hope you'll see that as well.

I'll close with something my deeply-loved Aunt said in the last years of her life, it feels more true now than every before.

'Getting old isn't for sissies.'