Dear Post-Holidays,
You know how it is, the big thing is over, and you are packing away your bits of sparkly ribbon, and you feel a little empty. Maybe you have even made a commitment not to fill such spaces with another box of candy or a steeply discounted little something for yourself, since you didn't get that genuine yak fur steering wheel cover you asked for this year. So all you have, then, is a sort of glittery mess to clean up and a refrigerator that needs to be cleaned of leftover seasonal foodstuffs (or maybe, your end of the year culture is not so dysfunctional as all this, and good on you!).
Maybe (even more shadowy despair) you are contemplating how to write the thank you notes to all the good people (and the less good) that participated in this strange fest with you. Maybe you are thinking how to make it more real and less of a pantomime performance next year. Maybe you got a gift that really hurt; I did,* and I didn't expect it, because I thought I couldn't really be hurt anymore by this person. Yes, that sentence does feel very familiar- like I have said this over and over, and over and over I have been surprised at how rawly sensitive little parts of me still are.
Anyway, you got this thing, like I did, and you have it, sitting right here, so you will never forget not to let this person under your skin again- you have this hurt on display in the form of the gift and the message it came with; a little shrine to your own pain, your own weakness, even. Many times I have saved a hurtful gift for a long time, hoping to learn from it, and also, truthfully, picking at the scab so it bleeds a little now and then. But, and this is my question for today, how long? How soon is now? When do I say, enough, I have examined this terribleness long enough; it isn't time to forgive, because that is something else again, and I think maybe we have all done way too much forgiveness already; but it might be time to dismantle the memorial, to take away whatever token it is that holds this hurt.
Let this letter then, this telling, to you, dear ones, be the thing that I will hold instead of an object that represents a tiny monument to my wronged righteousness. There is always more absolution to be poured, even when you have left the table, stopped showing up, walked away calmly, raged privately, and all the other good advice has been followed.
* Gifts like: an old bathrobe with instructions to 'make something' of it, the two halves of a broken wooden cutting board (oh, I kept that one for years, hoping it would armor me from further assault), a mangled, kinked gold chain, a holey ancient cardigan suitable only for a dog's bed, a 50 year old bent plastic purse. It is a startling list of junk, but when I read it, I see mostly, to my shame, that I did that; I did make something out of that damned bathrobe; I followed those mandates to make use of these unloved things like a loyal servant.
