my mom took me to (who I imagined was) the only black beautician in lakewood. it was raining and i thought of raphael saddiq, crooning, “it never rains in southern california.” i thought he was in for a surprise. it was 2003. 2004, perhaps. i ran inside using my magazines as an umbrella. my mom might have told the stylist how she wanted me to look; that my hair was coarse, like a Brillo pad; but she’s not tender headed. thank god. while i don’t remember how it turned out, i know that i couldn’t have looked like myself. i was but a reflection of my mother’s wishes.

that is the last time i remember being unaffected by the holiday season. i am never in the spirit to celebrate during christmas. if i could sleep from the start of daylight savings to the first buds of spring: i would. the world, my world, and every brick i’ve laid and torn down rests on my heart. this year was hard, as the year before it. i thought i was “done” grieving. the chime of completion rang above my head. i had all of my gold coins burrowed deep in my pockets until she showed me they were shallow. i imagined it. we all tell ourselves stories to live.

somewhere between sahara and tropicana, i am crying rivers. my head hurts. the taillights and streetlights and headlights blur like oil paint. how can someone carry so much pain? is it even mine? have i inherited it like my grandmother’s name? i want to smoke a blunt as much as i want my mom to see me as my own woman. still.

twitter showed me a video of nurses at the White House. jill biden, in her pink number and warm smile looks on. how bizarre it is to sing and dance as if a plague hasn’t kept nearly a million people away from their family’s table. as if a surge isn’t overwhelming hospital staff and getting flights cancelled. as if it’s inappropriate that after two years of social distancing, lockdown, and death that some of us are still grieving. the mundanity, the absurdity, and miracle of existing is all too painful.

being deployed during the holiday season allowed me to disassociate. it was 2013. my boss let us work half of our 12-hour shift and sent us back to our dorms. call your families. get some rest. work will be here for seven more months. i didn’t talk to anyone, say for my husband and roommate. it was easy to not “celebrate” the holidays. i was one of thousands of people missing from their families holiday pictures and feasts. a bunch of harry potter’s waiting for their ron weasley’s to take us in.

i went to three grocery stores to find ricotta cheese. the grocery clerk at albertsons keeps apologizing to me for making a mistake at check out. i wonder who before me rattled him with their impatience. why am i and hundreds of people here shopping as if christmas is not the same day every year? why am i here at all?

i grieve for what i don’t have. a family without too much chaos. a relationship that’s survived the blissful and terrifying stage. the people i love that i can’t call, both living and dead. the little girl who wanted braids and received bumped ends instead.