Happy New Year

The depression hits me with half an hour until the new year. I know how inauspicious this is. I won't blame Amber. She said something off-handed, but my depression, lurking beneath, fed no doubt on the occasion and its lack of specialness (the rain skunked going to see a ball drop in Kingston and driving to Poughkeepsie for sushi and board games) and a probable cold, overreacted.

I am responsible for my action, however they come, so I sit in the writing nook I have assumed cattycorner to our perpendicular book cases and try to talk myself out of this embarrassment. I am not going into 2019 riding this cliche.

Amber notices that I have retreated, though I am only four feet from her. The evening had been fine. We watched Close Encounters of the Third Kind because Amber had never seen it and, given that she played with her tablet through it, has mostly not seen it now. We ate Chinese food and a few snacks. She played one of her new video games, knowing that she soon would not have time for this indulgence. It was a cozy night.

She presses me on what is going on. I begin to snap at her for making me feel not attractive and as though she doesn't take our relationship seriously, even though we will be celebrating our fifth anniversary in half a year and that does bespeak some sincerity on her part.

Before the ball drops, I am tolerable. I am not 100% the person I want to be with her, but I am okay. I play the song we danced to at our wedding, which reaches its conclusion just as the year turns. There are fireworks outside, in the rain, which we hear and do not see, or try to see.

Amber immediately tends to our animals before bed. I stay up reading to keep her company for a while, then figure I am not doing either one of us favors and go to bed.

I wake in a worse mood than I was the night before. I know that my depression is not real, but I still feel it and must just fight through it.

We have cinnamon rolls left over from Christmas Eve, when we meant to have them and did not. We then try to find our plans with Kristina, where we were going to have brunch. The place I expected to eat has two locations, which I had not realized, but it is no matter. Neither can seat us until half an hour before closing. I try to recalibrate today with Amber and Kristina simultaneously, finally settling on PAKT at Amber's suggestion. That restaurant is only too happy to accommodate us, as though most people have never heard of New Year's Day brunch, or simply forget that PAKT exists.

The moment I disconnect from making reservations, Amber suggests that maybe I should have called another place she assumed would be too full (and they almost definitely would have been).

I glare. "Do you want to change our plans now?"

"No," she says, "but maybe Kristina doesn't know where PAKT is."

"Amber, she's been there before, two years ago, before Daniel left," I say. It is not that I happen to know this naturally, but that various cloud services show me picture of things that had happened the year prior. Kristina has been there, smiling. Amber drank champagne with floating pomegranate seeds. Daniel did not come to Uptown Kingston for the ball drop that year, retiring into introversion with Kest. My pictures have told me all these things, filling in what my memory might have otherwise forgotten.

Kristina, in fact, does not know where PAKT is, but I miss her texts alerting me that she thinks she is lost.

On the drive there, I gesture from my face to stomach. "I wish I could just cry to let all this depression out of me." My depression wants me to pick a fight, so I can be wounded and cry, but I am not listening to it. What has my depression ever done for itself? Absolutely nothing, so it can shut up.

I have not felt this bad in months and, though I have felt worse in my life, have hid in semi-catatonia in my dark bedroom, I want badly to be able to enjoy this day without neurochemicals and triggers interfering.

We arrive to PAKT just as Kristina does. The day is warmer than it ought to be, which I enjoy, and which Amber helpfully diagnoses a few times is a symptom of the world dying.

I am with two women whom I love. I do not want to ruin that, so I try my best to ignore my mental prickliness.

The restaurant is almost too loud for conversation, which I always neglect to remember about PAKT. Amber suggests for herself one of the specials, eggs benedict with fried catfish, which I declare tempting and ask if she would like to split. She says yes, then decides nothing else on the menu seems splittable to her, then suggests she get the soup and pick at my meal. I wonder if I have been duped somehow.

The meal passes well. We try to buy Kristina's breakfast, but she won't have it. I don't press the issue.

We return to my apartment to plan out a walk, settling quickly on the former Unificationist monastery in town. It had been on the market for a year with no evident buyers wanting to fork over seventeen million dollars. Amber suggests how we would start the best commune with this property, but it quickly turns into a cult, as these things must.

Kristina

The monastery is brown and sad, mostly abandoned. We see a van drive by and a few windows are lit, but it is largely empty, so much so that I feel like a trespasser to this open property. Now, in the beginning of January, when the snow has only recently melted from this ground, everything is a swampy muck that we must be careful navigating around.

When we arrive, the women point out that I have nothing but a leather jacket, while they have gloves and hoods and hats. I tell them I have my camera and the purpose of it is warmth enough, but I quickly wish that I had that warmth and gloves.

We follow one path, not long, while Amber looks for the labyrinth we saw here once, which was the whole reason for that initial visit. We find nothing buy grayness and dead plants, almost until we are planning to leave. Amber pushes through a small grouping of trees and finds a clearing where there is an arch surrounding nothing. The labyrinth is here, a circle of bricks, but buried beneath soil and dead vegetation. Amber kicks at the dirt to unveil a block.

"I want to figure out whoever makes these, then I want to get a job taking care of labyrinths." Though she has jobs enough as an artist and vet tech, she is precisely the sort of woman who would have on her business card that she professionally cared for labyrinths. She takes care of my meandering, intricate mind with a whiny minotaur, and literal labyrinths can't be so different.

Kristina finds an unguarded shack on the property, but we do not do more than peak in. Amber is still aloft in the fantasies of a labyrinth. "I could keep my tools in this shack and hide out here. Then I could tend the labyrinth properly."

"I could visit," I tell her. "Just give me a nook and I'll write while you make a labyrinth."

She seems unconvinced, as though I might be a distraction from the important work that wasn't hers until a few minutes before and which she is not actually hired to do. I cannot ignore the idea that she would come here and take care of the labyrinth pro bono, for the right to say she did. I don't believe that buyers will appear in abundance, unless Bard College takes a hankering to the property.

We leave after Amber is satisfied that the labyrinth has yet to disappear entirely, though it is nothing much at present. Kristina wants to be home before sunset.

I load her pockets full of Hershey's Kisses in parting, because we love her, and it seems a good omen for the start of a new year.

It was a lovely day.

I am still depressed by the end of it. Pretending the world seems fine to me is not a cure, but it I better than indulgence.

When I go to bed hours later, I tell Amber that I am keen to sleep in hopes it resets me to being the sort of person I want to be rather than merely someone playing the role.

The depression tells me that it is what is real and all those times, those long stretches, where I am fine and even happy are fake. The feats and anxiety are real, it growls. I know it is lies, but I feel it hard.

The prior year feels so short. It was surely just summer. I remember the last New Year's Eve sharply, and the one before when Daniel was leaving. Time compresses and speeds, which comes with existential unease, but simultaneously erodes the significance of these pretended portentous occasions. Today may be 2019, but it was also Tuesday. That is more my concern.

Soon in Xenology: This new year.

last watched: Angel: The Series
reading: The Art of Asking
listening: Damien Rice