Ghosts of Christmas of a Past

The tree is up, finally. I wanted it up right after Thanksgiving, but things got in the way.

I've been really focused on Christmas for the last month or so. I might be trying to feel some of the magic I felt from the past. My childhood, my childrens' childhood.

I do feel nostalgia, but do I feel the magic? Not really. I feel something though.

The blue tree lights were always my favorite. I remember how they looked, how they brought that special feeling of some kind of beautiful magic, even into my teenage years.

I remember clearly the last time I felt that way. I was 15, the year I met my first son's father. Just standing in front of the tree at my moms house. How the blue light emanated soft, yet bright rays in every direction. The room lights off, just the multicolored lights from the tree.

I look at my fake tree now, pretty, with only tiny white lights, no smell. We got it to save money and because it's convenient. But I'm not sure a real one would make things better anyway.

This world itself has no magic. Or I've changed too much to feel it. I don't know.

I watched an episode of Star trek once, or maybe it was one of the movies. Picard was trapped unknowingly in some kind of fantasy world, where you are always happy. His happiness was Christmas with his family. I remember thinking at the time that I'd rather be on a tropical island, or living in a mansion with millions of dollars. But now I understand.

As the past changes, I fear more and more losing what I had. It's not really about my own identity. I feel those memories are a part of me, the best part of me. They aren't just a representation; they are what makes life important and worth living.

Maybe I'm being shown that I need to focus more on now. It's a possibility. I do try.

I've read and contemplated all sorts of possibilities about reality and time. One is that there is only now, and everything, past and future, are projected each moment from how I perceive things currently.

And quantum mechanics supports that. But who knows, maybe I just made that up subconsciously to try to explain to myself what is going on. I could be stuck in a dream, not wanting to wake up.

Maybe it's done this way on purpose; it gets so unpleasant and weird and uncomfortable and difficult that we finally HAVE to wake up.

I decide a couple of days ago to just live my life, and ignore the mystery of what reality is, and what is happening to me and the world. But I am drawn like a moth to a flame.

...

Christmas has come and gone. I wish I hadn't written such a depressing story, but it is what it is.

I've been feeling a bit better about the Mandela Effect.

I've started to become more curious as to what is going on. The depression and anxiety have eased a lot.

I don't like change. Or rather, changes that I don't understand.

But I live in a world now (or I've come to a new perception of it) that changes continuously.

I have to learn how to adapt. I'm doing OK with that.

I am changing too.

Refusing to close my eyes to what is going on, and refusing to deal with it, is the biggest factor that has made this whole situation one that is unpleasant instead of an exciting adventure. This is a whole new world, after all.