So This is Christmas

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Merry Christmas, everyone! I sincerely hope you all have had and are having a wonderful time with the people you love.

For me, well, let’s just say this has been the strangest Christmas ever.

Every year, for the past couple decades, I’d get up on the morning after Christmas, shuffle to the kitchen in my flannel pants, make coffee, bust out the extra rib roast and sides, starting heating things up, maybe pour a small glass of leftover wine to go with the meal, and enjoy the hell out of my morning.

I’d watch the kids playing with their new toys and gadgets and games. I’d hang out, maybe watch something, or play something myself. I’d enjoy the feeling that the stress of getting ready for Christmas now being over, it was the first day where absolutely nothing was expected of me, and I could just enjoy existing with the people I loved.

Today, I woke up in my own little studio apartment. I somehow managed to spend the whole night sleeping on top of a fully made bed, after falling asleep with the TV on, alone. It was chilly in here, so I’m a little surprised I didn’t wake up cold. I shuffled the ten feet to my kitchen in my flannel pants, made coffee, and then shuffled another few feet over to my desk. Despite having spent way more than I wanted to in the past few weeks, I still needed some furniture items to make this tiny space feel like some kind of home.

There are no leftovers. I did buy a small rib roast for myself that I’ll probably make today, since I got it for an incredible price - only $6.99 a pound! Once I figure out how, that is. I’ve never made one before.

I did get to spend Christmas with my kids yesterday, although I missed out on seeing them open any presents I didn’t bring. Then most of them took naps for half the afternoon because like the silly teenagers they are, they’d been up all night. Only the little ones stayed awake. It was weird, though, spending the whole day at the place that used to be my home. Everything peaceful. Nothing weird. I spent about an hour putting together the rocketship playset for Eli, my 4-year-old, with the help of Mia, my 10-year-old. (Truth is, Mia, who is obsessed with space, just like her dad, seems to be enjoying it even more than Eli is.)

Jamie made dinner, and we all ate together. Then I spent the evening watching Stranger Things with her and my daughter, Sophie, until it got late and I had to go home.

Home.

I don’t know what that word means anymore. I spent 13 hours yesterday in the place and with the people that should fit that word, but somehow no longer does. I went back to a quiet little empty place that’s filled with my stuff — what little I have — but where there is no love, no background noise, no ambient human presence. That’s the place that now fills the “Home” address slot on my GPS. That’s the place where I now go at the end of every day spent shopping or working or running errands. That’s the place where I’m typing all of this right now.

This is what it looks like:

It’s 500 sq. ft. of WTF.

Very spartan. Very “bro-coded,” as the cool kids right now would say. I don’t need much. Just a little more storage, a place to sit, maybe some more shelves. I have a folding table and a folding chair I use for eating, when I don’t just eat at my desk.

I couldn’t bring myself to buy a little Christmas tree. I just wasn’t feeling it. Not only that, but I’d need somewhere to store it, and the tiny closets I have are already packed with the boxes for my monitors and computer and TV. Stuff that’s a pain in the neck to move if you don’t have the original packing materials. And my lease only goes for a year. I have no idea if I’ll stay here longer, or if this is purely transitional. I certainly don’t need much more than this. At least not now.

I have no idea what 2026 will bring, but I see no indication that reconciliation is on the horizon. I have no idea how much will have changed by the time I start hearing Bing Crosby on the radio again. The coming year is a gigantic question mark.

There’s a lot of stuff you sort of anticipate having to grieve when going through the unwanted cleaving of a shared life, but what you don’t anticipate is all the little ways the ontological shock from the loss of identity and meaning and purpose and understanding of how your existence was even supposed to work bleeds through into your daily activities. Being a visitor, not a constant, in your children’s lives. Trying to untangle what’s yours and what’s hers as you extract the material artifacts of your existence from a quarter century of shared life. Going home every day to a home that isn’t. The photo and video memories that pop up on your social media apps that shove the fact in your face that it wasn’t always like this. The feeling that comes when you want to share a thought or an insight or tell a joke or talk something through, but the one person you always did that with, the person you grew up together with, isn’t the person you can have that interaction with anymore.

Your safe place is gone.

You are cut adrift, like an astronaut whose tether has been severed, drifting slowly and inexorably towards the infinite, unreachable stars.

I find that I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to cast an anchor. How do I attach myself to something that feels solid, and meaningful, when it feels as though everything I ever believed in turned out to have been a lie?

I knew that coming back to Raleigh would be the hardest part of this whole journey. I knew that I was coming to a place where the only people I really knew were my wife and kids, and that meant I would be in total isolation outside the very narrow windows of time in which I got to show up to my old life, like a visitor to a museum of memories.

I am prone to sensory overwhelm, and my old life could be far too chaotic and messy and cluttered and just plain loud at times. But silence and austerity can be loud, too. Sometimes even louder. I miss the sound of small feet running and jumping through the house. I miss the random hugs, the unexpected conversations and jokes, the sound of my boys laughing upstairs when they’ve already been told half a dozen times to go to sleep.

Objectively, this space I’m in now is a better environment for me to work. To write. To focus. I often complained that things were too crazy at home for me to think straight. Too many interruptions, too many distractions, too many competing priorities. I never wanted the exact opposite, though. I just wanted balance. I wanted to work during work time and be with my people the rest of the time. Chaos can be disruptive when you need to concentrate, but it’s also a sign of life, and wellness, and love. Emerging into that environment at the end of a long day of making stuff is like coming up for air after the silence of swimming under water. All the senses come rushing back in as you inhale.

But for now, this is it. This is what life looks like. I’m almost settled in. I’m still reeling at the fact that I’m here, not there, but I feel the tug to turn this into a crucible. If this is an environment honed for work, then let me begin finding the work that matters. It’s going to be the thing that keeps me alive and growing. Let me begin using the time to heal with intention and purpose, so that whatever happens, I come out the other side of this a stronger, better man than the one who went into it. I can already see the beginnings of that inside of me, as grief ever-so-slowly diminishes, and resilience and a newfound sense of self grows.

One of the last things Fr. Joseph Krupp said to me before I left Michigan (and I will get around to writing that chapter of the travelogue soon) was this: “Remember, you’re going back a different man than the man you were when you left.”

And I’ll be a different man next Christmas than I am right now. If life has taught me anything, it’s that growth only comes through pain. Pain will bury you, if you let it. But it can also forge you into something new.

Challenges remain. I’m not done grieving, even if it’s less overwhelming than it was. I need more paying work than just this Substack, which has grown helpfully, but not enough to live on yet. My cash burn moving into this place was way higher than I anticipated and my savings are dwindling fast. Evie — my car — has continued to have problems, and is now not just overheating on mountain passes, but any time I get stuck in traffic or have to sit idle. I suspect there’s something wrong with the radiator fan, and maybe more issues deeper into the cooling system. She’s been running a bit rough and I’m hoping the head gasket is still OK. I’ve got an appointment on Monday to get it looked at, but I’m worried it’s going to be a large expense that I won’t be able to afford, and that car is my lifeline. Still, until I get it fixed I can’t spend my nights doing deliveries so I haven’t been able to do any gig work for a week. I watch the temperature gauge like a hawk any time I go anywhere. I also have to get the entire vehicle information system replaced. It’s gone from intermittent to done. No backup camera, no stereo system, no Bluetooth for my phone, no climate controls for the cabin…it’s all tied up in that one module. Dealer said they would pay for the replacement but I’ve got to just take a day and get it done.

I’ve joined a coaching and support group for men going through unwanted separation and divorce that’s designed to help you heal your nervous system and get to a place where you can live a normal, functional life. The suicide rate among men going through this is nine times higher than average, and I understand why. There are times when the pain is so unrelenting you just want anything to make it stop. I have a hard time believing there’s a version of life after this that will ever truly feel worth living, but I’m going to try to prove myself wrong.

And somehow, I need to find a way to make some local friends. One thing I learned over the past couple of months is that even if you’re the kind of person who can spend significant chunks of time happily alone, being alone all the time is not good for you. We were meant to co-regulate. Just being in the presence of another human being who is calm when you’re not can level you out. I am so not a “joiner.” I don’t go to group anything. I don’t join clubs. I am not a member of any association. I have a lot of trust issues, and I struggle to create boundaries or say no. It’s one of the aspects of myself I have to work on. But I’ve noticed that when I’ve had no human contact for days, I become this gregarious extrovert. I will talk to strangers in stores just to have some human interaction. I’ve lived like an introvert for years, so this always surprises me when it happens. But it’s the kind of thing that can help me grow, I suppose, if I can channel it correctly.

I apologize for going on so long. This is about as stream-of-consciousness as I get. I wasn’t even sure I could force myself to write today, so I decided imperfect was better than nothing. I didn’t even do an editing pass, so if you find any typos, please forgive me.

And one more thing: I’ll probably say it again soon, but I just wanted to thank all of you who have financially supported me (through subscriptions or directly) as I’ve gone through this from the bottom of my heart. YOU have made this survivable. I have never lived alone. I went from living with family to college to roommates back to family to moving in with a very pro-active wife who took care of all the details. This is the first time in my 48 years I had to get my own apartment, set up all my own utilities, manage all the minutiae of day to day experience. Your financial support allowed me to take the trip that helped me stabilize so I could come home and face all of this without falling completely apart. It’s the reason why I was able to get a place at all. It also allowed me to help my wife with a bunch of expenses related to the kids that I couldn’t have helped with otherwise. If I get through this and find my way back to success, it will be in no small part due to all of you. I will never forget that.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go figure out how to make a rib roast.

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