’Tis the season to be merry, they say…or not, in my case.

I’m not talking about the weather, because to be honest, I like the fresh, sharp cleanliness of the cold at Christmas. I like the way the wind snaps around my heels and buffets the collar of my thick coat. I like the way the moisture in the air freezes swiftly into icy beads on my skin and clothing. It all keeps me awake without the aid of caffeine, and it reminds me there’s a world out there that’s really alive—that is, neither cosy nor completely under anyone’s control.

So my mood must be because of the holiday season arriving, accompanied by the usual social hysteria and overindulgence, like two hyperactive cousins on a holiday visit. That must be the reason that I’m withdrawing again—that the outside world seems particularly challenging. My mind is full of thoughts that depress me: sadness, frustration, the futility of struggling through this Christmas cracker joke called life while everyone else is grinning and hugging.

To me, Christmas looms like a dark, grey cloud, like the memory of something hidden in the back of my mind, like the threat of a nightmare coming true. The season has never been good to me, though, has it? I grew up in a family that was way more dysfunctional than devoted, and we rarely celebrated it with anything except Mom’s drinks cupboard and my brother’s recurring criminal record. Dad left us one Christmas Eve; my dear Gran died on another holiday weekend. Basically I was pretty happy to leave home as soon as I could. Unfortunately I struggled to cope with being on my own, and I know I should have sought help sooner. That was a hell of a time. But when I reached rock bottom, I had enough sense left to cry out, and my friends came running. I came up for air that time, so there’s hope for me, right?

That’s what I tell myself. Often.

Those friends also disagree with me about Christmas, but I guess I love them for it. My friend and fellow bartender Bailey visibly brightens at the sight of the sparkling shop windows and says that Christmas is a time of magic and goodwill. My rather less sentimental friend Saul rolls his eyes and says that all very well, but he doesn’t understand why goodwill should be restricted to a couple of months in the year. My quiet but far more thoughtful friend Cass smiles at them both—and especially at Bailey—and says that Christmas is what we make of it.

Trite but true, I guess. Maybe my history twists the worst from the season like squeezing a lemon and drags me down with its sourness. So I don’t often discuss the topic with anyone except my friend Aaron. It’s a time for being solitary, in my experience. I’ve never kept a lover over the holidays, and a couple of them have blamed me for actively pushing them away. I’ve never been a particularly safe romantic bet at the best of times.

And what does Aaron say, when I inflict yet more of my whining on him? Well, he’s my rock, and his opinion is the most important to me for several reasons. Mainly because he’s my bestfriend. He’s also wise in a reluctant, unpretentious way, and he takes shit from no one.

And, also, he wants to be my lover.

* * * *

We first got together last winter. The season had played its usual trick on me, and I’d been in a bad car accident a few weeks before Christmas. Not my fault in any way, but it took me a long time to get mobility back in both legs. In the meantime, I’d lost my job at a local bar and I had no ideas on getting a new one, with my ankle in plaster and pretty shaky confidence. The guys tried to get me out and about to parties and socials, but there must have been plenty of things more rewarding for them. I was bad company. Verybad. Christmas just felt like that final straw.

But Aaron didn’t give up on me. Took me to the hospital, joked me through the appointments, saw me through the physical and the emotional medication. He cajoled me when he wanted to, and yelled at me when he needed to. I was in need of help, obviously, and he made sure I both asked for it—and got it.

He came around every day whether I invited him or not. I hid from life but I couldn’t hide from him. He brought me out of my sad old bedsit and back into real life, and incidentally into his too. I’d known him as a friend of Cass's for a few years, but we’d never got together as a couple until then. We started dating—well, we decided that’s what we’d been doing already!—and I was startled how easy and pleasant it was. In the new year, I got myself a new job at the bar where Bailey worked, keeping up the books. It came with a fairly modest salary and an even more modest expectation of me. But that was good, and I treasured it. Still do. Aaron also persuaded me to move out of my flat when one came up for rent in his own block. Now we’re only a floor away from each other, though we spend a lot of our free time together in one or the other’s place. The dating is still going strong. That’s verygood, and something to be treasured even more, of course.