Not worthless at all, Shawn. A great post.
Sorry, rabidgopher04, but the holiday depression, and often outright despair, can go far beyond matters of envy and comparison to others.
Depression tends to be far more individualized in its experience than most people realize, and so I'm only speaking for myself. But for me, the "holiday" is usually as close to torture as I ever want to get. I'd rather sit in a classroom as people ran their fingernails down the blackboard.
I've never been suicidal. And as my faith has grown in recent years, I expect that is less likely now than ever. (Because, to me committing suicide was a sin far greater for Judas than the betrayal itself, for it is the only sin that is forever damning.) But that doesn't make the holidays any easier. Indeed, it may have made things worse, since now I'm always frustrated at how the modern world has bastardized the second most important event in Christian history. Add in that pressures in the weeks leading up to this season are especially heavy at the job I really don't want to be in right now.
I tend to be envious of others far too much and far too often. But Christmas is not a time when I feel envy. Christmas is a time when I just want to crawl into a dark corner and not be bothered by anything of the world. It's a time when I need to be most careful that I do not go off the meds.
I've long since stopped going to "Christmas parties" and the like. And this year I had just two family-related "obligations," both of which in years past have been more positive than negative. One gathering, with my sister and her grown daughters at a brew pub, would at just about any time have been a good deal of fun. Yet, despite having a three hour drive home afterwards, it was all I could do to limit myself to one Bloody Maria and one pint of beer. Heck, I even went through Christmas morning church in a fog. People here know how serious I am about food, but the most advanced cooking I was able to do in December was making boxed mac-n-cheese or making popcorn on top of the stove. Mostly I ate lunchmeat and cheese and bought McNuggets and pizzas.
The thing that finally got me out of the worst of this year's funk was a PM from Foster, I forget what day (Thanks, Marine!). But I'm lucky that I'm in a job that doesn't require any people work between Christmas and New Years, because my productivity wouldn't have just been low. It would have been zero or negative.
I'm probably in the worst financial situation I've ever been, coming off a semester when I did the worst job of teaching I've ever done. And, yes, I'm still permanently single, yadda yadda yadda. But this hasn't been close to the worst of holidays I've had. It was actually one of the better ones I can remember in recent years -- I've got a new hobby, and I've got Thuji the Crazy Puppy.
Trust me, though, O'Connell barely touches the surface of what a lot of people can and do go through this time of year.
Fortunately, the season is always followed by the turn of the calendar to a new year. Screw all that Auld Lang Syne shit. January 1st means you can tell an entire year of crap, in this case 2012, to go fuck itself.
And that, my friends, is an amazingly liberating feeling. It and Foster's PM, my friends, were the two best things about the holiday season for me.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)