Mariah Carey Gave It A Shot

If you are going to sing me a Christmas carol, make it emotional.

Rudolph can kiss my ass.

Ear-i-fied the Mariah Carey Merry Christmas CD yesterday and today. Especially today.

The first four songs are Silent Night, All I Want For Christmas Is You, O Holy Night, and Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).

I dabbled with the CD yesterday. On the way to fucking physical therapy. Checked out a lot of it. I pounced on it today. Nothing but the first four songs. Over and over as time would allow.

Stuff intensified me. It did not ignite Christmas spirit. That is not going to happen this year. I am dead inside. Feel nothing. Something is stirring inside. Maybe it is just fear of the end of 2013.

Another pisser of a year. Dead ends all around. Some ugly fucking stranger in the mirror. A joke of a life.

But 1-4 on the MC CD get a response. Raise emotion. As I sit here exhausted after an 11 hour Christmas Eve day in The Asylum - pure goddamn hell - I'm thinking maybe the response is connected to what I wish Christmas was. Some intense feeling of wanting someone to come home, or some overwhelming feeling of hope and reverence towards a new born king.

This ain't coming out so smooth but try to follow me. Christmas is a groove. With my family it cannot be anything but.

Tomorrow will be pure.

I will wake up next to Carol, a woman in every sense of the word. The woman who has given me her life. The woman who I cannot imagine being without. I always say if it weren't for Carol I would either be dead or in prison. That is true but it is really kind of a punch line. What she gives me goes infinitely deeper than that.

I will look at my sons at the dinner table, in the living room, in the kitchen. I will be blown away to recognize once again that these two men, these amazing men, are my sons. That they are good men, intelligent and wickedly funny. That they still love me.

I will look at Emily, I will look at Karen, I will feel so good to see the connection made between these women and my sons. It is not a one way thing. It is not just a "wow look at the amazing women my sons have attracted" thing. It is a "wow isn't this amazing that these two magical women with their unique talents and perspectives and personalities have meshed with what my sons have to offer" thing.

I will look at my brother and how easily he connects with the most important people in my life. My wife, my sons, my daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law-in-training. I will relax to the release in tension brought on by the way my brother makes me laugh. The easy way he makes me laugh with his humor that is so intelligent, so juvenile, so sharp and so quick. I will amaze at how lucky I am to be close to a man like this. Lucky to call him brother.

Thursday, December 26, they will all be gone and I will be back in roasting hell. Fucking Asylum at 8:00 a.m.

I want Jesus to be born, I want Carol to come back to me after her fling with Raoul the pool boy, to tell me that yeah, after some consideration, I really do have something to offer.

I want something big, something dramatic, to happen on Christmas day. Christ at this point I would even settle for one good night's sleep and one pain free day.

That's all I'm saying. Christmas will be magnificent because my family will make it magnificent. They will make me forget the incredibly stupid decision I made in 2013, against my gut.

For one day.

I think I had tears in my eyes tonight to tunes 1-4 on the MC CD because I WANT so deeply. I hunger for massive change. I want Christmas to be transformational. I want it to turn me around and flip me upside down and give me myself as a gift.

That probably ain't gonna happen. But I did buy myself some nice black Nautica athletic socks. It's my new obsession.

That's about as good as it gets for me right now.