Just about every December I have the song by Counting Crows called “Long December” playing on a continuous loop in my head pretty much from Thanksgiving right up until the new year.
The melancholy candle-lit mood of brooding next to a rain-speckled window and sullenly, yet hopefully, looking out into the distance and hoping for better.
Just about every December I remind myself how cliche it is to brood on a schedule like this and every December I tell myself I will not mentally loop that song for 5 solid weeks because I will somehow not be brooding when December comes.
I will somehow not think of the family members we lost this year and I will somehow not think of all the ways my Dad failed me and I will somehow not think of the tiny 17-year-old Chihuahua that we said goodbye to only a day after the Christmas festivities this year.
And while we’re at it…”Christmas festivities”. Yeah, we are still in a weird pandemic and grieving for so many deaths and it’s just not festive.
My soundtrack lately is the hum of the dishwasher, JD killing electronic monsters with much crashing and beeping, and the slow steady hum of dissatisfaction.
I’m antsy in my bones to connect to the world again but also might be just fine if we go on living this way physically disconnected from one another, pinballing through endless Zoom meetings, random text messages, and photos on Insta that make everything seem ok for a split second.
But I miss Josephine. I miss her savage love for interrupting my thoughts and I miss the way I feel like nothing else is important but doing her bidding by slamming out words on a page or slapping paint all over a canvas or just thinking of exotic ways to exist. I conjured her when I was 19 and imagined she was a fanged red-haired maiden in a lush green velvet dress and she would show up unannounced at the bedroom window of my mind and we’d explore memory and emotion together, sometimes late into the night.
I miss her. Hell, I was her at one time. I’d say I don’t know what happened to her but I suspect I do somewhere under all the things I do to stay busy when I don’t want to think.
I’ve been busy for 20 years now.
The house is clean. The bills are paid. My career is noteworthy. I’ve built countless circles of friends and social frameworks. I’ve transformed my physical self a million times. I’ve uprooted myself and morphed. I’ve done all the things except sit down with Josephine and ask her what she wants of me at this age, now that I am wrung out by life.
“More”, she will say.
This I know.