Christmas Wrapping

I sat, crossed-legged on the cold, faux laminate floor today, wrapping presents.  Each one had a different variant of Christmas-themed paper, one holly, one ivy, one fairy, one some sort of terrible garish tartan that the only thing deserving of being wrapped in it would be a set of bagpipes.  Because the only person I would ever dream of giving bagpipes to would be that man at the station who called me a twat.  I might be a twat, sir, but you, sir, you, sir, are a Cunt.

I like Christmas, in its way, but like my birthday, it reminds me incessantly of the slow march towards death.  It inevitably recalls the lost magic of my youth, and the ever-growing tragedy of another year I've done fuck-all with.  Every year the pile of Christmas cards grows smaller, like it has The Shrinks, and neighbours die, and the round robin letter those most loathed people send becomes a tally of divorce and demise and little Sophie got AIDs this year and apart from her crippling heroin addiction we can't think how.

I do really like Christmas.  I just don't like mine.

It could've been worse; at least I didn't do the song.

To the lady - Alcohol Awareness Week, Day V

To the lady who told me to sort myself out.  Who said just stop drinking.

To the man who told me I should cheer up.  Who said it might never happen when it already had.

To my father, who told me how quick I would forget our fight as though he didn't know it would keep me up for weeks.

I answered politely at the time but afterwards I almost wished I hadn't.  I didn't thank you for your honesty, or believe you really did just 'try to help.'  I don't think that there was any real care in you, just a morbid curiosity and certainty that you were right and I was wrong.

I should've told you what I thought.  I should've said you haven't got a clue and if I could change myself like I change my fucking socks I would.  I let you go on thinking I was something broken you could 'fix' with your shitty little comments and condescending look.  And you kept me up that night wondering if you were right.

God forbid you say the same to someone less reserved than me.