Complex Numbers

Carol of the Hells

"30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS"  [13+]:
20. Go Caroling Day
Have you ever gone caroling, or had a group of carolers show up at your door?
Write something about caroling.

"JAFBG"  [XGC]:
This is the most wonderful time of the year! Now, tell us why that's total bullshit.

Now there's an appropriate combination of prompts if there ever was one.

Look: it's not my intention to shit on someone else's festivities. I get depressed around this time of year, same as lots of people, and I'm not going to begrudge anyone the ability to do anything to try to pull themselves out of a funk, or celebrate whatever.

But listen: holiday music makes me all stabby. I know I've talked about this in previous entries. It doesn't fix my depression; the best it does is turn it outward, to anger. While I've never lashed out at anyone physically, and expect I never will, I do get vocally angry, my temper on edge, and I don't want to be around people when that happens because, like I said, I don't want to shit on anyone's day.

The kind of music that does cure my depression is depressing music. That kind of music makes me happy. But you don't see me blasting it in elevators and stores and waiting rooms and entire radio stations, convinced that all anyone has to do is listen to Leonard Cohen to make themselves feel better, because I know that while it works for me, it's not going to work for everyone.

If I'm not in a bad mood, and carolers are about, I can mostly ignore them. If I am in a bad mood, they just contribute to worsening it.

And that's one reason why this is not the most wonderful time of the year: it assumes that all anyone needs to feel joy is some blinky lights, catchy music, and consumer spending. Such things seem to work for most people. But it's like if I assumed that, for instance, thick incense smoke is all that anyone needs to cure what ails them and so I'd go around in a haze of sandalwood and patchouli. I'm sure some people would appreciate that, but I'd wager that others would consider it annoying. Well, all the bright sparkly glittery cheery shit everywhere is like that for me.

Worse, people have been programmed by years of "holiday stories" all the way back to Dickens that anyone who's not on the ho-ho-ho bandwagon is automatically a Bad Person by definition and needs to be dragged by a blinking string of lights attached to a cadre of reindeer into a forest of decorated fir trees. And I don't know; maybe I am a terrible person, but mostly I just want to be left alone until the cheer firehose gets turned off and we're back to the normal cold dreariness of winter (although don't get me stared on valentine's day either). I don't need to see sparkly lights or hear jingly bells, I don't need to be caroled at, and I certainly don't need to be subjected to peoples' inevitable family drama.

But for the sake of the people who do enjoy such things, I'm usually less vocal about it in life than I am in here.