On Wanting To Want To

Please read this post as an explanation—a plea for understanding—and not a pity party. This time of year is so difficult for so many. I speak only for myself, yet I know I’m not alone in my feelings.

Last night . . .

Tonight, I’m sequestered in what is now My Craft Room. It was Cassidy’s room the longest, but for almost two months, it was Cooper’s bedroom. It was his last bedroom, and it still holds his clothes, his Bible, his journal. Note #1 is in his dresser, a portion of his ashes in the keepsake box. I can reach the nightstand where note #1 lay folded on his Bible.

So here I am, in a room I try so hard to call “My Craft Room,” but that tonight is, quite thoroughly, Cooper’s Room. Most of my spare time at home is spent in this room, making things. Okay, sometimes trying to make things. This room offers endless possibilities—I can make or fix, design or cut, paint or pour. I can experiment without concern for failure. This room is my unlikely happy spot.

Tonight, our first night of winter break and barely a week before Christmas, I’m trying to somehow find Christmas spirit. In this room that had to be completely dark for Coop to sleep, I’m surrounded by the multi-color twinkle lights of my youth. The nostalgia of those lights can’t hurt. Those lights equal happy times.

It’s worth a shot. Because, let me tell you, I am dreadfully low on high spirits. I have our normal woodland tree and Cooper’s cardinal tree, and, aside from the rogue strand of colorful twinkle lights, that’s it. I haven’t gotten the candles in the windows and the stockings aren’t hung anywhere with care; the stockings and candles are in a tote upstairs.

Pushing through only gets me so far.

Those two trees? They stood bare for two weeks. I had to make myself decorate them. I am 52 years old, and my reward for decorating was time in the craft room; I would not allow myself to start on my next project until those trees were decorated. The window candles? Slightly more understandable, since I want to start their timers at a specific time and I haven’t been home. Still . . . they are in a tote upstairs. The stockings? The stockings are a problem. The thought of hanging the stockings makes me want to vomit, but so does the thought of not hanging the stockings. All. Five. Stockings.

Every day of this After has been difficult, but these days—these happy holidays—are torture. The expectations—whether societal or self-imposed—are daunting. Constant Christmas music taunts me as I shop. I can’t escape the feelings force and I remember enjoying the warm and fuzzies. Now? Well, now this time of year is wrapped in layers of “wanting to want to.” If you know, you know.

So here I am, cocooned in . . . Cooper’s Craft Room(?), looking at Christmas craft ideas on Etsy, making lists of gifts to buy, and hoping these damn twinkle lights do some good.