They say the most suicides happen around the holidays...

...because people whose families are gone or split up or just not coming to town get really depressed, especially as said people get older. The opposite kind of phenomenon happens to me when I go home for the holidays...

The hardest thing for me to get used to about being home is consistently the shock of how much time I spend alone. I thought this would change this year, because I have a single, but I simply don't spend any significant waking time there, so it unfortunately has no desensitizing effect on me. Even at a school that falls into the "small private" category for my JP, on campus I'm almost always in the presence of other people. Even though I live in a single, a hundred or so people live in my building, and I can hear the girls across from me laughing sometimes. It's no big deal for the girl in the shower stall next to me to ask to borrow my body wash; bathrooms have been deprivatized. (Yes I just made that word up.) I eat all my meals with a subset of the same group of 70ish people, the Large Library has a crew, and there are certain friends I can't see without hugging.

But my house isn't structured for such interactions. With the split levels, it's really as if every person has his or her own floor. My sister and I flip-flop between the living room (2nd landing) and our bedroom (5th landing), rarely coexisting in the same space. My brother's room is on the third landing, next to the office with the computer he broke, so no one else is ever there, and my mom spends all her time in her room on the third landing. We each exist in our own separate worlds, and rarely do they meet.

My friends aren't within walking distance here. Even if they were, I don't feel the same ability to just show up uninvitedly; here in the real world, there are families and gatherings and other plans.

So here there are days when I realize I hadn't spoken until after 3 this afternoon, simply because there was no one to say hello to til then.

India would say Sometimes I'm alone, but never lonely. I wish I could agree with her. And E says this shouldn't bother me as much as it does. She says free time is a gift that I should be thankful for, but free ALONE time has always been a curse to me. I'm good at creating space and time for me within lots of hustle and bustle, but I'm at a total loss when "free time" stretches before me like a lake with the stillest of waters. It's not even that I would like to have everything planned out, because I'm not the biggest of planners, it's just...if I'm watching TV, I would rather have someone to laugh at the TV with, someone to steal the blanket from, someone to roll their eyes at me when I tear up. It's that, while I wouldn't mind getting one of those fancy new touchscreen handheld Scrabble console things, I would always rather have an actual partner to play an actual game with. It's so quiet here. I miss the strange commingling of first-person-shooter and Mario Galaxy sounds coming from the Game Room.

Fact that others may find sad but I just consider to be a fact of life: My friend circles have always felt more familial to me than my actual family feels most of the time. That only really bothers me at all around the holidays, when everyone disappears from AIM and Facebook and talks about all the fun they're having/going to have with their families. I smile and nod like I'm cosigning that, but really all I think about is how much I miss the people I share my life with. Those people and the people who share my DNA or even my permanent address have never been one and the same.

Thought that actually saddens/terrifies me: Is this what's waiting for me when undergrad life ends?

This one goes out to all my ladies

I have love on my arms in six languages today. All that love, it's for you, all the ladies of all the world. Today, and every day, I want you to know that you are loved. You are appreciated. People care about you. You matter to someone. Your thoughts and opinions matter, as do your safety and well-being. I want to remind you, ladies, that your bodies are your temples, so treat them with love and care, and remember that no one can tell how wonderful you are on the inside unless you reflect that on the outside. To all the women who feel like there aren't enough hours in the day to get everything done, take a twelfth of one of those hours (ie. five minutes) for yourself, take off the invisible 'S' you carry around on your chest all day, and breathe; you'll be shocked at how much easier the rest of the day comes. To all the women who don't know where the rent money is going to come from, or how you're going to put food on the table for your kids, I admire your strength and resilience, and I know that if my mom could do it, you can do it too; you are in my thoughts and I hope the best for you. To all the women beating themselves up striving for perfection: stop and take a look around; you're already there. And to all the women who gave up their pursuits of happiness a long time ago, I want you to go stand outside and feel the sun shine on your skin, the rush of the wind through your hair, the laughter of the kids playing next door, and remember that while there may be darkness and pain and struggle and strife in this world, there is also joy and light and blessed moments of peace, and above all else there is love, and this is worth living for. To these women and more, I have love on my arms and it's all for you.

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"To Write Love on Her Arms is a non-profit movement dedicated to presenting hope and finding help for people struggling with depression, addiction, self-injury and suicide. TWLOHA exists to encourage, inform, inspire and also to invest directly into treatment and recovery.

To Write Love On Her Arms Day is a day where anyone can write the words love on their arms, to support those who are fighting against depression and those who are trying to recover. On this day, just write love on your arms, and show it off, other people will ask why you have love written on your arms, and you tell them you are supporting to write love on her arms day, and how its benefiting a non profit organization helping stop depression, and make love the movement ♥"