Magic Tree Heals Depressed Woman
Soul sparkle for the season
Three years ago I experienced one of the lowest seasons of my adult life.
Strangely enough, this Super Low™ came at the end of a long period of steady positive progress, almost like my mental health was trying to ascertain if I’d really healed all those pesky traumas and triggers lurking beneath the surface.
By all accounts, I should have felt buoyant and bullet-proof at that time. I was doing ::air quotes:: GOOD ::end air quotes::
I had pulled myself out of the not-so-great habit of binge-drinking my pain away! I had made peace with extreme sensitivity! I learned to reach out to friends even when I felt like a gargoyle!
I’d also: transitioned to a new career, dealt with imposter syndrome, taught myself financial solvency, has support from a glorious community, and (with the financial help of my parents) moved into a little fixer upper duplex that I could invest my life in and grow a sense of security and peace.
That’s a lot! I shoulda been flying high on cloud Killin’ This Adult Thing!
Instead, two months after buying said duplex, I was curled up in a ball on the living room floor, hoping that the neighbors don’t see me sobbing and get too concerned (Hey, Ryan and Lorelai!)
Why the sobbing, you ask?
Well, it wasn’t just one thing. It was a multitude of factors.
It was the isolation of the pandemic, buried grief about being single and moving into a place alone, fear about choking on a peanut and my decaying corpse not being found for days (sorry, too macabre?), the fact that I had only touched 2 people in 6 months (my doctor and my dad, God bless them both), the stark reality of being a solo amoeba in an amoeba colony world, being told with knife-edge precision the thing I feared hearing most in the world—that I was a burden, that I wasn’t wanted, that I actually made life hard for others, etc…etc…and so forth.
That’s a lot! Turns out you can “Kill it as an Adult” and still want to not be alive!
To be honest, I think ball-curled sobbing is a perfectly natural response to all we’ve experienced the past several years. (Side note: if you’d like to reply to this message with YOUR stories of ball-curled sobbing, I’m all ears!)
I think humans rely on other humans. Or at least we rely on the hope of having other humans that you could rely on if things ever did get so bad.
And then in 2020 they DID GET SO BAD.
And we were all like OH SHIT! RED ALERT!
And as much as we all tried to support each other, it was basically week after week of eye-opening examples dog-piling into a devastating, dawning awareness that—celebrity’s coming together to sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” not withstanding—maybe you couldn’t count on other humans in the way you needed or wanted.
It was a lot! For all of us!
It was a crash course in learning what it means to be theoretically loved but logistically alone.
The world said “ LOL JK ‘bout your community tethers!” And you had to cope, and move on, and be a functioning being—all the while lonely, and isolated, and grieving a story about human connection that bottomed out for you.
I don’t know about you, but I had to do a lot of letting go of what I thought I had and cobble together new stories of security and peace that relied on different things.
And that new sense of security and peace came in the form of Christmas ornaments.
Turning to holiday baubles for my emotional stability went like this: I decided that, since I had never had a “real” tree of my own, I would get one that year. I figured this would add some external festive cheer to my life, and, as the comedian Ali Wong says, maybe adorning myself in sparkles would “make up for the light inside of me that had died.”
And since I didn’t really have any ornaments, I decided to ask friends to share their extras with me so I could decorate my tree with more than the sad and dusty candy cane I had bought at the dollar store.
I went to Facebook (the great connector) and put out a request for any Christmas ornaments my community wanted to pass along.
And then my Christmas mind was blown.
Package after package after package arrived at my doorstep with the most touching cards, words of love, and ornaments.
Some were generations old. Some were custom. Some came with homemade jam (hey, Mr. Kopacki!). Many were hand-made with time and care. Others were: silly and sentimental and touching and thoughtful and personal and poignant and…well, the list goes on.
I’ll be honest, I thought maybe I’d get old ornaments that people had lying around—an extra ball from the “all blue tree” year, the wooden figure that just doesn’t quite make the cut anymore, etc….
What I wasn’t expecting was weeks of pure joy opening ornament after ornament from friends all over the world, feeling like my tiny house was full of love even though I was alone in it.
A house that weeks before had felt lonely and bereft turned into a joyful, soul-giving, encouraging space: all because of the people in my community who took the time to give their care (and Christmas cheer) to me.
And (and this is huge): because I had decided to zig when my world had zagged.
I looked at my tree and I saw physical evidence of love and support. I also saw a very keen reminder of how I’d grown: that I wasn’t just going to roll over and die, that I was resilient enough to keep hoping in the face of hurt, that my own willingness to look for a silver lining created an opportunity for something beautiful and soul-giving to come to be.
Every night I would basically stay up later and later, dragging my feet about going to bed because I just wanted to stare lovingly at my wondrous Christmas tree—simply reveling in the lights, the magic, and the story each ornament told about how I was known and loved.
Now, several years later, I still look at my Christmas tree the same way. I’ve added some of my own ornaments from travels, but every year as I unpack the ones from 2020 I feel a deep sense of gratitude and love—for holidays, for my community, and for the ability to search for a new story when the old one falls apart.
Sending you magical tree vibes for this season and beyond (no matter the state of your story),
Annie B.
THREE GOOD THINGS
Squee! This butter sleigh video is perfectly precious.
Please enjoy this list of absolutely unhinged and terrifying Christmas ornaments.
If you love Bob’s Burgers, then you’ll love this video of John Roberts (the voice of Linda Belcher) imitating his Long Island mother talking about her Christmas tree. (Sidenote: I don’t think a day goes by that I don’t say “Awww lookit the traeeeeeeee” in this voice.)