Christmas from a deep hole

This is a very difficult time of year for people who are isolated by depression and loneliness. Every time you look at a newspaper, a magazine, or a commercial on TV, you see another happy family celebrating together, making cookies, baking bread, wrapping presents, maybe healing old wounds. You see people coming home or visiting each other. You see friends hugging each other. You see huge smiles as presents are exchanged.

And then I look at the empty room around me. I look at the wall where I would put up any Christmas cards I received. It's empty. So far, the only card I've got came from the person who delivers my newspaper, a total stranger hoping for a large tip.

I stopped sending Christmas cards a few years ago because there was never anything exciting to report about my life. My kids are grown, so I can't hide behind their achievements any more. And writing about what I do just was too - well, depressing. Still single, with no hope of that ever changing. Still struggling from paycheck to paycheck. Another year closer to the end, with no hope of ever getting that warm, friendly Christmas I can't avoid seeing everywhere else.

I miss receiving Christmas cards. The bright-colored pictures, the friendly notes, all make the house that much warmer and less of a lonely place. When I was a kid, my parents sent out over 100 Christmas cards, and got at least that many back. My mom hung them from ribbons strung on the wall behind the dining room table. (She still does.) As an adult, I never received anywhere near that many. I thought it was a personal failure, but maybe it's just a sign of the changing times.

At church there's a bulletin board where you can hang a single card, then donate the rest of what you would have spent. Maybe I'm miserly, but I'd rather have a card hanging in my living room where I can look at it and know that somebody was thinking of me. For a depressive, the little things are important. It'd be a warm glow in an otherwise shadowed and dark place.

Originally I wanted to write this as a short paragraph for a Facebook status update, but I ran over the character limit. If anybody reads this and would like to exchange cards with me, it could make my Christmas a little less empty and lonely. Right now I have no hope for the future. People keep telling me it has to come from within myself. But a Christmas card could help me find it there.