Where is home at Christmas?

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

I've been worrying about Christmas ever since this summer, when -- a month or so after the heart attack -- I was informed that I had a dangerous blood clot in my leg that precluded flying cross-country.
Things have gotten better since then, at least in the opinion of the doctors, because I've been on coumadin, a blood thinner that also doubles as rat poison. Still, Christmas loomed large.
This last week, things have all caught up with me. The list of hurdles to overcome in order to go back to DC for Christmas was long: doctor's approval, ticket prices, dog sitting, time off from work -- one by one I started to work on these issues, but I found myself getting upset, stressed, worried about it all. I finally got to a point where I was almost breathless trying to deal with it all, and it reminded me of the day I had the heart attack -- I'd been worried for a couple of weeks because I was going to fly home for my sister's wedding, and had no one here in California who could watch my dog. It was getting desperate and I was searching and searching for kennels or house sitters who could deal with an anti-social Chihuahua... of course, this was all moot because I had ended up having a heart attack on my front lawn and wasn't going to be going anywhere other than Good Sam hospital for a bit of surgery.
Long story short: after spending a week or so trying to clear up each part of the puzzle, I finally realized that the real impediment was stress.
Stress is one of those things that people can't quite put their finger on -- is it real? Or is it in my mind? It turns out it is real. At least, for me. And I don't know how to deal with it other than to get upset and emotional and worry about it. I want to make everyone happy, do things for people, and make people happy. But sometimes this just makes me crazy.
Still, I haven't made the long story short, have I?
Simply put, I decided that the least stressful thing to do would be to not go home for Christmas. And therein lies the rub: where is home? Is it my little house in California, where I have just celebrated my first anniversary? Or is it my Dad's house outside DC, the only other city I've ever lived in?
I wouldn't call myself estranged from my family, but it's not like I spent every day with them. I'd go out to my dad's house one, sometimes two weekends a month. I didn't spend a lot of time with my family. Still, there's something very different about being almost 3,000 miles away. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all of that.
Anyway. Whine, whine, whine. Here I am, by myself -- except, in an uncomfortable way, for my ex-lover and his husband, who are basically the only close friends I have here in California...
Ho, ho, ho.
An interesting aside that shows just how strangely cyclical life is: when I first met my ex (Jann, who I've certainly mentioned before here), he lived in Santa Clara. About 2 miles from my house now. Creepy. After we broke up and he moved back to California, we used to talk to each other every Wednesday on cell phones as we both drove to work. A kind of commuting relationship. Since last week, he picks me up and I ride with him to work since we both work at the same company. Man, the Buddhists were right. This is an ENORMOUS circle.

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