‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.

            I haven’t been writing much lately.

            I haven’t been a person lately. Not blog posts, or poems, or even working on one of my many WIPs like I should be. Since Thanksgiving, I guess you could say that I’ve just found myself in a bit of a rut. This year, I had so many things I wanted to do in December, before Christmas, that I thought if I took a little time to myself, I could make those things happen but, that’s not what happened at all. Instead, on the night of December 5^th, 2021, my little brother’s 20^th birthday, I found that Gideon one of my sugar gliders- my first, and sweetest, and most bonded glider had passed away in his sleep.

            And that fucking broke me.

            So, instead of going through with all of my plans I didn’t go to any of the holiday light drive thrus. I didn’t make any gingerbread houses. Didn’t watch any of the holiday baking shows, or bake the cookies like my family normally does. I barely did any Christmas shopping in stores, and what I did do, came late (thanks FedEx) though, I feel like I should just be happy it came at all. Now, here we are, the night before Christmas, and I have never felt less Christmas-y in my life.

            I know that grief is a funny thing, and that I should be gentle with myself but, it’s hard. If my mom were here, we would’ve made Christmas cookies, and watched our holiday baking shows. We would’ve watched Christmas movies and built gingerbread houses- we would’ve done the light drive thrus, and the Christmas markets, and everything else that I wanted to do this year and didn’t.

            Now it’s Christmas Eve, and instead of doing one of the many things I could be doing, I dropped my little brother off at his father’s family’s house about an hour ago, and I’m curled up in my bed with my Kindle and a cup of coffee, after spending the past half hour playing with my silly rat horde. Grief is a funny thing. It’s a hard, terrible, awful thing, and it doesn’t have a time frame. It doesn’t care if it’s been one year, or two, 6-months or longer, we all deal with these things in our own time.

            So, this Christmas if you don’t have a family to spend it with. Congratulations, I’m your family now. So, eat some good food, drink water, take your meds, and be gentle with yourself. It’s okay, and we’ll get through this together, I promise. Merry Christmas.

            -Sky