Blue Funk, Depression, Blah-ness. There are too many words to describe the feeling I sink into this feeling every Christmas. I seem to have succumbed to the foggy haze that surrounds me and it shits me. I see no real purpose to it, nor do I understand why it happens. I get it every Christmas and have done so since I was about 17. There’s no real reason that it started happening and it disappears without warning.
I have always prided myself on being able to adapt to change. I have always embraced it with great enthusiasm. I left my little home town at the age of 17 to travel across the state to attend university. I was challenged and fulfilled and at the end, I travelled across the world to meet friends, see a bit more of the earth and change myself. I did it all. I have moved to various placed without knowing anyone before I met Glen online and took the plunge by moving states, without a job and without an idea of the future.
These days, I’m beginning to become afraid of change. I don’t like it, and in fact, I crave stability. I know it’s a sign of age and nesting, but let’s not go there - yet.
My world is changing again and I don’t like it.
During the last six months or so, I have been reminiscing about the past, more specifically, high school. Quite frankly, my memories have been prompted by the songs I listen to, and my memories are closely associated to the songs of the time. I can tell you a story of my youth by the songs from the time.
These are some of the songs that evoke very strong, and sometimes emotional memories:
Big Audio Dynamite - Rush. 1991
Paula Abdul - Rush, Rush. 1992
Luther Van Dross and Janet Jackson - The Best Things in Life Are Free. 1992
Boyz to Men - End of the Road. 1992
Wendy Matthews - The Day You Went Away. 1992
Bryan Adams - Everything I do, I do for you. 1991
Daryl Braithwaite - The Horse (Sarah!) 1991
Londonbeat - I’ve been Thinking about you. 1991
Right Said Fred - I’m too Sexy. 1991
Sinead O’Connor - Nothing Compares to You. 1990
Roxette - It Must Have Been Love. 1990
Milli Vanilli - Girl I’m Gonna Miss you. 1990
Peter Blakely - Crying in the Chapel. 1990
1927 - If I Could. 1989
Grayson Hugh - Talk It Over. 1989
Billy Joel - We Didn’t Start the Fire. 1989
Glenn Medeiros - Nothing’s Going to Change my Love for you. 1988
It sounds a bit naff and I suppose it is, but I didn’t find much solace or whatever in the songs from 1993. It wasn’t the best year for me and it was also the year I turned 17, around the time I started to realise life wasn’t filled with roses and sunshine like we all thought it would be. I lost a lot. I can think of a lot of things that I lost, but the biggest one was losing my best friend. My childhood started to fade, and I guess adulthood was imminent. I think we all wanted it badly, but I don’t think we really understood what was waiting for us. More importantly, we didn’t know how to deal with it and we said and did a lot of things to our friends, that we came to realise as mistakes.
I’m not sure where I am going with this. I’ve just been feeling lonely for this time of my life. I guess there were a couple of good years of what I can only describe, as innocence and blind aspiration. We were free to roam, we had friends nearby, we hung out every weekend but we aspired for more and we all had our dreams. I dreamed of being a journalist, others wanted to be veterinarians, teachers etc. And then there were the friends who kept scrapbooks filled with magazine pictures. Of what, you ask? Their ideal weddings, the homes they would live in, the clothes they would wear. I remember it clearly, I remember thinking it was kinda cool, but I never had the inclination for it. I never had names picked for my children, didn’t know how many I wanted.
Why?
I was too busy riding my bicycle around town, sleeping over at friends’ houses, watching Anne of Green Gables, swooning over Shannon and Bill, swooning more so over Gilbert and trying very hard to understand the concept of the “bush fire” talks we got from our youth group leaders. In the background, but always in the foreground, the need or rather the push from elders within our church to take religion into our hearts and live and breathe it. Something, which I never truly embraced, but more like became peer pressured into pretending I accepted it all.
It’s funny; at the time, we all hated our lives, we wished for something better, to get out of town and begin our lives. But you know, I look back now with fondness. I don’t know why, but I spent a lot of time being moody, feeling like I didnt belong, wishing to be somewhere, where I was understood.
I’ve got a lot of thought swimming around my brain. Many of them relate to this part of my life. It helps for me to remember these things, to write them down and feel them. I feel so full of words, too many jumbled memories, too many to pour out into words right now, but I’ll get there. You are forewarned.
By the way, I got my dream to become a journalist. But you know what? It was not all it was cracked up to be, and as a result, I spent about four years in the industry before realising the dream was not the reality I wanted it to be.
PS: Still on hiatus, just talking to myself.
