Dear Diary,

I'm feeling very alone tonight. A sense of ennui* seem to be overwhelming me tonight. I'm glad I got out to the chiropractor this afternoon...still...I just am going through some traditional holiday blues.

It is almost as though would so love to be able to "check out" or be put in some sort of drug-induced coma for the next seven weeks while American consumerism goes on "tilt." This is the time of year when we are belted left-and-right by shallow Christmas ads with their "Merry Christmas" and the very politically correct adulations of "Happy Holidays" accompanied by worn out Christmas tunes...ooops "holiday" music.

I think part of my "Scrooge" attitude is coming about that this is the culmination of a totally crappy year. While there were a few good things (can't be totally negative here), it has been a year of lost personal friendships, lost professional opportunities, lost family relationships, and mostly the serious illness of a very very close family member whom I have been caregiving now for six months. (I guess one positive thing is that although a personal friendship blew up into a billion pieces and I still don't know why -- at least now I have out of my life a very sick and twisted individual with their untreated bi-polar illness.) It would seem that some of the links to my past keep disappearing one by one. My attitude is also because I'm feeling exhausted from six months of constant caregiving. I'm not complaining about doing the caregiving...I'm just a bit burned out with the cleaning, driving, calling docs, cooking, regular household chores, trying to run the semblence of a business and career, trying to take a little bit of time for myself from all of the above.

The whole adage of it being pointless to cry over spilled milk is so true. But I guess my whole negativity is fueled by the ominous responsibility of being a caregiver, but realizing that I'm going to be -- for all intents and purposes -- totally alone and kind of forgotten over Thanksgiving and Christmas for the very first time...kind of rekindling some childhood imagined fears. Thoughts and memories of happy holidays past resonating in my head could very well become deafeningly overwhelming.

It's not necessarily that I have a real choice (my conscience sometimes can get deafeningly loud)...but I'll have to survive...I have no choice....and at least I once again get to keep in practice of maintaining my chronic stiff upper lip as the world goes by. As usual.

"She had gone back to Tara once in fear and defeat and she had emerged from its sheltering walls strong and armed for victory..."

"With the spirit of her people who would not know defeat, even when it stared them in the face, she raised her chin..."

"I'll think of it all tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. After all, tomorrow is another day."

(Liberally paraphrased from Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind.")

* ennui: a feeling of overwhelming weariness, listlessness and dissatisfaction.