a very angry christmas

This holiday season I’ve been less concerned with ornaments and more concerned with primal rage. As a woman, sometimes I feel like all I’m allowed to be is an ornament. Something you hang in a tree and watch sparkle. “Look how sweet!”. Like a doll on a shelf with dead eyes and porcelain skin. Rosy cheeks painted on because no life or warmth could ever penetrate that exterior. It makes more sense to me these days why feeling “sweet” and “sparkly” makes me feel “good”. Because that’s when I am viewed as good, when I am an ornament. And yes, it is also a true part of me that I like feeling sparkly and sweet sometimes, but you can feel sparkly and alive or sweet and dead. Being identified as sweet is about the worst thing you can do to yourself, because there is nowhere to go from there. No feelings can be expressed. No demands. No rebelling no yelling no nothing. Sweet. Manageable.
Isn’t sweet just a cover-word for manageable? As a little girl, if you’re sweet, what makes you sweet exactly? Merriam webster defines sweet as; agreeable, pleasing. Doesn’t that make so much sense with the context? When you are a kid and sweet, what is it that you’re actually doing? You are being agreeable, pleasing, manageable. Your parents can handle you. A sweet sweet doll.

But I’m not a doll. And the rage I feel is not only anger about specific events but the rage of not being allowed to express that anger, and herein lies the viscous loop. The more anger I feel, the more rage i feel for not being allowed to express it, which makes me more angry which makes me feel even more rage. I feel doomed to this rage wherever I turn. Even in my sleep it shows up as guns and massacres and stabbing knives. I guess it has to come out somewhere because the truth is I don’t know how to face it head on, because no one has ever showed me how to. I am just as afraid of it as my surroundings were. It doesn’t even feel personal at this point I feel like its a collective cultural problem. We have to find ways to embrace and express and accept our anger in safe ways. Especially during the holidays, it creeps up like an uninvited guest, like Santa’s evil twin. We wrap it up and put it in the far back under the Christmas tree, and it doesn’t get opened until some drunk relative finds it and rips it open at 1 am. Don’t get me wrong Christmas can be very cozy and warm but it is also the holiday of suppression for so many people. Bottle up and bottles up! I’m sick of it. I want to do it differently and I don’t want to be an ornament or a wrapped up stuffed away gift. And I certainly do not want to be a doll. I have hoped and waited for the porcelain to melt for so long, but for it to melt, it has to heat up first. And that’s the scary part.