The Day Before the World Pretends

Day 30 – December 23, 2025

There’s something a little unhinged about the day before Christmas Eve. The world starts putting on lipstick. Everything gets brighter, shinier, more aggressively festive. People are out here acting like cinnamon can solve emotional damage and a string of warm lights can keep grief from finding your address.

Adorable.

I don’t even mean that sarcastically. Not entirely. I think people want December to save them a little. Or soften something. Or at least distract them long enough to get through the end of the year without fully losing their mind in the self checkout lane while “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” plays like a passive aggressive threat from the ceiling speakers.

Honestly? Valid.

Today felt like that to me in pieces. Not the holiday magic part exactly. More the strange in between. The threshold. The almost. The feeling that the world is trying very hard to be tender while I’m still standing here with a nervous system that thinks tenderness is suspicious if it arrives unannounced.

Which is a very glamorous way to live, obviously. But there were moments today that got through to me anyway. The tree lights. The softness of the apartment at night. Roger being Roger, which is to say a deeply unserious creature with the soul of an old man and the investigative instincts of a bored detective with no badge and too much confidence. He is amazing.

And of course me. Still here. Still more emotionally complicated than any holiday movie heroine would be allowed to be. Still trying to understand what it means to carry both gratitude and grief at the same time. Still trying to make room for quiet beauty without feeling like I’m betraying the darker parts of what this year has been.

That’s a strange thing nobody talks about enough. How after trauma, even good moments can feel complicated. Not because you don’t want them. Not because you aren’t grateful. But because part of you is still scanning the room while another part is trying to enjoy the glow.

It’s exhausting being multidimensional with a functioning memory. Still, I let myself have some of today. Not all of it. But some.

Some softness. Some stillness. Some moments where life felt almost gentle, and I didn’t interrogate it immediately like a suspiciously hot detective in a silk robe and unresolved emotional tension. Growth. Seriously.

And underneath all of that, I kept returning to the same thought,

I’m still here in a year that tried very hard to make that difficult.

That matters.

More than the tree. More than the season. More than whatever version of holiday spirit the world keeps trying to sell wrapped in red and gold and denial.

My presence here matters. My life here matters.

Even now. Especially now.

Because this time last year I had no idea what kind of year was waiting for me. No idea how much would be taken. No idea how much would be altered. No idea how many versions of myself I would have to bury, fight for, resurrect, and remeet.

And yet somehow I still arrived here with enough softness left in me to notice beauty, enough bite left in me to tell the truth, and enough nerve left in me to keep going in heels if necessary.

That feels important. Actually, no. Let me say it correctly.

That feels like power.

Chaos in one hand. Grace in the other.

And me, on the edge of the holiday, still standing in my own life with all the softness and sharpness intact.