Anticipation has been my dearest pastime since I was a child: Christmas Eve is my favourite day of the year for a reason. The wind-up before a pitch, the curtain rising before a show, the ball before it drops on New Year's Eve are often more enjoyable to me than the action itself. Everything in life is made up of a trio of stages: anticipation, action/occurrence, and remembrance. As fun and adventurous as the middle part can be, it stands on the precipice of disappointment. One stage is woven into the next in too infinite of a way for them to be untangled: it is impossible to savour one without partaking equally of the others. I guess that this is one of life's great levelers.
Perhaps this is nothing but a highly personal quirk that few others share, or maybe it is more widespread: of this I am uncertain. What I do know, strongly, is my own personal back-and-forth when it comes to special days. It is a concentrated bit of manic-depression that otherwise never visits me. The giddiness of anticipation turns to black despair once it is all over, and the confetti has been turned to dust.As long as there is something else in the queue, my recovery time is quick.
My mom visited over the weekend. It was not a long-planned event so my anticipation-time was limited, although highly concentrated. I always enjoy myself immensely when I am with my mom. What we do never matters; spending time with my life-long best friend is key. We always have such a great time that it is one of the exceptions to my anticipation-is-always-better rule. When it comes to mom-time, anticipation and enjoyment remain equal. What changes is how sad I become once we have parted.It is relatively brief--a day or two at best--but intense. This has been a life-long pattern for me, in regard to time spent with my family: get-togethers always lay me low after the fact.
I gave myself a pass yesterday. I slept, ate my home-made pie, wrote very little. It was responsible for my relative silence. I have finally expelled it from my system, as I usually do by this time. In accepting it for what it is--a manifestation of what is of greatest personal importance--it has ceased to fret me. I have come to terms with the roller-coaster ride of the above-mentioned trio. Although I always strive for a better balance, as long as I taste of life's enjoyment, it matters little what part of the beast it comes from.
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