You'd hardly know I was existentially tortured!

On my run, I stumble upon a Christmas parade already in progress. I do not know what the front of it might have been, though I am fewer than a hundred feel from its beginning. I am not going to run in that direction. Through the crowd of a hundred parents and children, I weave to continue my usual course.

But behind my neoprene mask, meant to keep the cold at bay, I grin madly. It is difficult to know whether the adults around me can read the smile on my eyes or think I am mad in either sense.

I've always had a soft spot for Christmas, beyond what most people my age experience, particularly when they are childfree Pagans.

I am happier than I have in a long time looking at a fairy lit firetruck, awash in childlike delight. It is not as though this parade is anything glorious. There is only a cart full of people and a bearded man in a sleigh -- and this description is generous.

If my features were not obscured, one might think that this parade was one of the best moments of my life.

Santa throws a peppermint candy. I catch it in one hand and then wave. He waves back, all jollity and real beard. There are no children at this stretch, nor could I be mistaken for one no matter how bundled I am. I give credit to Santas who do not discriminate based on age.

In my daily life I am skeptical of my emotions. Sometimes I do not react at all as I expect. I meet joys and tragedies with wide-eyed wryness. Then sometimes the smallest thing sets me off and I cry. I'm aware it's going on; I can't stop it. Or a small turquoise bear figure makes me so blissful that I must ration my exposure to it. (I've done the same with songs. I cannot let myself ruin how they let me feel.)

I don't understand why this parade affects me so. I thrill at the emotion long enough to stave off curiosity about the why. Best to occupy this holy moment before crushing it into a powder to study under the microscope.

I resent that my birthday is coming up. I do not relish the idea that it will be my last year of being in my 30. I can convince myself that being in my 30s isn't that old. When I turn 40 next year, I can't perpetuate that delusion.

I've been dealing with aging in visible ways. I am used to having a boyish charm, and I'm not going to grow into being roguishly handsome. I'm just going to become old. I don't know what to do about this.

A thing that keeps me going is that I'm becoming so much a better writer. I can sit and write a 6000 words story without effort or fatigue. That would have astounded me even five years ago. Therapy and medication, along with actually sleeping, has helped more than I can state.

As the winter grows deeper, it gives home to a sadness that can't be strong in summer light. For seven minutes looking at this parade, the small sadness finds no purchase in me. I am not existentially uneasy. I am enjoying what's in front of me outside a context further than "Boy, my town is cute."

December is the month of my birth, which I hate. It is also Christmas, a holiday I like enough to have written an anthology about it, a time when people are nice for a little while. The end of the year comes awash in this mix of emotions.

The only way in which I'm getting better is in my writing. When I am cognitively fuzzy, because of an illness or stress, I panic. Don't let me lose this. Aside from my writing, I can point to periods in my life where something was better. I had better hair, I was healthier, I was happier, I had close friends whom I saw at least weekly, my wife was more relaxed. These are no longer the case. I am thinner than I was at any point from 15 to 36, attributable to my medication and insistence that I must get 11,000 steps a day or be miserable. I am more self-aware now. But it is the writing that is better. Everything else is apt to continue deteriorating.

All the more reason that I want to cling to the peppermint candy that I caught from that Santa, insubstantial though it is.

In most of my life, I'm repressing this existential angst. I am not usually happy. I'm on the pleasant side of neutral because I actively do not think about the things that would destroy me if I did. I'm not thinking about getting older. I'm not thinking of watching my gradual decline until I'm nothing. I'm not thinking about the things that I have not done and probably will never do, the doors long closed to me and painted over. In a month Amber's grandfather and my aunt died, forcing further contemplation of mortality.

Much of my life is distracting myself from what is going on in my head. I listen to podcasts over an hour a day most days, because music affects me too much. Learning gives me topics on which I can write and things about which I can think instead of personal speculations. Podcasts give me topics of conversation other than how I'm doing, because I do not know how I am doing.

I am grinning because I see a parade. I am sullen because I lost my favorite pin. I do not know how I am in December.

last watched: Schitt's Creek
reading: A Warning by Anonymous