The eye of the storm.

I have past the freaking out, bang my head against the wall stage that I have wandered in and out of for the past several weeks and have settled into an eerie calm, very suspicious of the type serial killers must feel before they dismember their victims.

I've started drinking caffeine again, which should probably be discordant to this eerie calm, but it's not. I think something popped in my brain and the caffeine is the only thing keeping my heart beating.

I'm so stressed that I don't know how stressed I am because I've never been this stressed before.

I'm afraid in two days when I arrive at my parents' house for Christmas that I'm just going to go nuts. Like, nut job nuts. Like Bushmill's on ice, slurring my words at the dinner table nuts. Like laying in the middle of Palatine Rd. with my dress over my head nuts. Like arrested and booked nuts.

I need to purge some sins. Bad.

Tuesday night when I got home from work around 8 p.m., I sat on my couch and bounced my knee repeatedly as I bit my fingernails, staring at the coffee table blankly. I counted the hours there are ahead of me before I am be able to take the vacation I was supposed to take next week three weeks from now.

It's 552.

I think I've lost my mind.

And this peculiar calm isn't helping.

And here's the main reason why. In a season where love is supposed to be proverbially "all around", the dark side of people has revealed itself to me. That's disheartening.

I am trying to look for the silver lining in things. As I mentioned, its a quality I've discovered in myself that surprises and enriches my life more and more every day. I have retained my optimism even in the thickest spots of adversity. I don’t know how...or why, but it's stayed with me.

And I know that one of these days some asshole is going to knock me down and I won't get back up so easily or eagerly, but friends, today is not that day.

The silver lining I was talking about earlier happened to reveal itself today in the form of a little girl in red tights trudging through the snow wearing snowflake mittens.

Under stress or not, Christmas truly is a wonderful time of the year.

Take notice of all of the other cars around you in the next couple of days. Each one of them will be packed with people, families, friends. Lights will seem brighter, people friendlier.

It warms my heart to know that on at least one night of the year we are all heading in the same direction, all traveling away from loneliness and toward family and peace.

It is, without question, the best time of year.

Merry Christmas to all.