I wasn't really concerned about spending Christmas alone. It is pretty clear to all that I am not Christian. There is some speculation that Jesus was a High Boddhitavva, that he traveled and studied Buddhist teachings in his lost years. There is even some theory that Jesus was a reaincarnate of Buddha himself. But, all the same, I do not celebrate his birth. In any theory, he was still just a man. The celebration of Christmas in my life is cultural and Western and untraditional. My children and I have a long tradition of celebrating the holiday on any day, when the time feels right. This year, that was December 12th. By the 16th, the tree was down, the stockings in boxes and the family spread around in various places. Today is Christmas day. A day most will celebrate the birth of Jesus and be with family and eat and exchange gifts and watch football. But, today, I woke up alone in Mexico. And I did not feel any need to be elsewhere. My children are spread celebrating with other people who love them and care about them deeply. My husband is on a ship somewhere and we are barely speaking anyway. So, I didn't mind waking up alone in Mexico. I did not long for my family. I am ok.
Last night, I let the culture of this place guide me. I visited friends and had drinks and roamed around dispensing good wishes and receiving friendship and tequila. I was invited to several midnight dinners. An apparent tradition here that I appreciated and enjoyed the idea of. But I was reluctant to accept these invitations. Only for one reason, I do not speak the language. I felt that sitting with a group of friends of friends and their friends and so on would likely result in my sitting at a table with Spanish conversations buzzing around me and I would not understand most, if any, of it. Still an idea that I appreciated and enjoyed but I did not firmly accept any invitation.
As it happened, I was moving from one set of friends to another and was stopped in the street by another set. (Isn't that sentence beautiful? Yet another joy of this city and this part of my life. People. So many wonderful people) I was 1 beer and three margaritas into Mexico Christmas Eve and was content to just be roaming. But, the set of friends in the street would not let me pass. It was firmly decided for me that I was to go with them to Christmas dinner at a local home and there was no saying no. I actually resisted a bit but in the end decided that the insistance of my conpany was worth whatever would come of me in the swirling spanish voices at a stranger's table with people I knew well and people I would meet that day.
So we went and we bought cervesas and rum as our part of the dinner and I found myself in a small Mexican apartment. There was no table. There was only friendship and smiles. Chairs and stools and the smell of meat and spices and good will. I was welcomed into a couples home who I had, incidentally, met the night before. There were no strangers in the house. I was overcome with this incredible feeling of being honored to be invited into their home. Honored to have been so insistently welcomed into their tradition. I felt a sense of kindness and connectedness with the room full of people. The Spanish and English both poured out of everyone as easily as the cervesas and rum poured into our glasses. I felt, as I often find myself feeling here in Mexico, like I was at home. Like I was where I was supposed to be. And then the dinner was served. I had seen it cooking. It was in the corner of the one room apartment after all, but I was so caught up in the community of it all that I had not paid attention to the content of it. Just the smell. And then, the woman of the house handed me a plate of spaghetti. I don't know why it struck me as so funny to be having spaghetti for Christmas dinner, but it did. They called it chili over noodles. It was delicious. The song "Cheeseburger in paradise" parodied in my head as "Christmas Spaghetti in paradise."
As the night and the drinks went on, soldiers started to fall. I found myself, at 4am, walking down the street with only 2 people left. I intended to be on my way home. But the men left standing with me, both from the group that insisted I come to the dinner, wanted to stop at the tall one's house to complete the celebratory night with some Mexican weed. So, we detoured and I found myself in another one room apartment with a tall boy and a drunk boy from California, a Altoid tin of marijuana, a cervesa, and a coca cola can. It reminded me of so many times with so many friends. The coca cola makeshift pipe reminded me of something my husband had said a week ago and so many nights as a teenager watching friends pass around a can in the same way and me passing it up all the time.
So, in my 4am Mexico Christmas rum and cervesa and spaghetti state of mind, I took the can from the tall boy and I smoked weed. It's a little inexplicable. I not only do not smoke marijuana or do any other sort of drugs but I especially hate being high. "Seemed like a good idea at the time" comes to mind. I don't know why I did it. I think I just wanted to connect with so many of my friends and my childhood friends and my new Mexican friends and continue to feel the community of the night. So, I didn't pass on the makeshift coca cola pipe. I got high. I mean, I got really high. It's a little foggy for a bit. I know I layed in the floor and put my head on something softer and heard different ins and outs of the tall boy and the california boy coming in and out of consciousness too. But I did not feel bad, or uncalm, or any of the things I usually feel. I felt good. I felt completely relaxed. I probably would have just stayed there on the floor and found some dreams. Everyone was basically in the same state I was in. But then the california boy's body decided it was time to purge. I hazily heard the door of the apartment open and then the all too familiar sound of 5am's violent rejection of cervesa and rum and spaghetti and weed. The california boy was puking, loudly, and the tall boy was providing water and whatever comfort anyone can give in that situation. Me, I was still just laying there being high. But, I got up and put on my shoes. It was time to go home.
Then, my thoughts went strange. I started having these thoughts that since me and the tall boy (he is a friend, by the way, with a real name and he is a man, not a boy, but he is 6'4" and has this funny innocence about him so I have never called him anything but the tall boy) were the last soldiers of Christmas, we could not fall. I could see, or maybe not, that he understood that. He was ready to soldier on too. We went with the California boy to hail a cab and made plans to go have a drunken breakfast. Soldiers watching the Christmas sun come up. But, as the cab rolled up, the California boy got in already fallen and wounded and the tall boy started to waver. A few minutes of debate next to a cab at 5am on Christmas between three drunk, high, probably mostly incoherent people and the tall boy decided on sleep.
I have to blame the weed for what I felt after that. I was offended. Hell if I know why! I felt like I was the last soldier left and everyone had abandoned me. You know me, with my over analytics and my constant searches for the deeper reason for my feelings. Weed doesn't help that. I guess it took me 36 years to find that out, but now I know. So, the fact that the tall boy who is nothing more to me than a casual friend passed out drunk and high in a completely normal and logical way at 5something in the morning made me feel abandoned. Rejected. Like I was being cast out. The entire cab ride home, I was lost in these thoughts about how the tall boy had been my last hope (of what, I don't know, I only know I should not smoke weed) and that I was all alone and rejected and it was somehow my fault.
So, logically, of course, I came home and immediately messaged my estranged (or, well, I guess I'm the estranged one) "husband." I remember doing it. And I remember swimming in all these feelings of abandonment. And I saw my husband had been online (damn facebook for giving me the ability to know such things) for 2 or 3 hours and had only sent me two words. And, logically, of course, I sent him a message asking him if he was too drunk (?!?! He was at work on a ship without the ability to even drink alcohol) to answer me or if he just didnt want me to find him (?!?!?! find him? He's on a ship in the ocean) because the "tall boy had given me all the rejection I can handle tonight." I read the message back to myself and started laughing. I mean LAUGHING. What the fuck did I just write? And I couldn't imagine how my husband would actually even be able to decipher the sentence. What? Haha. I wrote more. Laughing at first. And then I went some place sad and dark in my mind. I read it all this morning. Some was things he wouldn't even understand at all because it was coming from my subconscious. Others were apologies for my blame in the current state of our "marriage." I felt it all. And over felt it all. And realized that my feelings of rejection and abandonment and being left to soldier on by myself were just manifestations of how I felt about my life right now, about my marriage, about my disease, about my lonliness, about my uncomfortable transition into freedom. He read the messages at 11am this morning. 18 minutes before I woke up. He didn't respond with a word. If I was high again, I'd be able to use some seemingly unrelated experience to explain how that made me feel even more rejected and abandoned. Even more alone. But, I'm not high. I'm just hung over alone on Christmas with my feelings and these words on the screen.
But, I am ok. I am. I didn't mind waking up in Mexico alone and I do not long for my family. I am still doing this important work of figuring myself out. I think I'll go back to hating weed. But I think it helped me on the path to figuring out me. Today, I'll meditate on rejection and abandonment and lonliness and why freedom is so uncomfortable. I'll try to let those things go from deep inside me. I am ok.
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