a christmas story with a moral (i hope...)

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
-the waste land, t. s. eliot

i remember christmas this way. the last, at least. only fragments remain, ragged at the edges, cracked and parched, in their own way, from the heat, from the dryness that mocks renewal from its vaulted throne.
but not all ugly.
it began this way, an early december night, a man returning to his home to find traces of absence, residues of departure, and a home suddenly too blank, like a magnificent sketch slowly erased, smudges remaining on the page to signify that there was once something there, but no way to recover it.
wounded wandering. a missing toothbrush. some clothes gone. hollow. i can hear the walls. they're mocking me. they know something i don't.
less man than emotion now. anger, fear, loneliness, sorrow, loss, resentment, love, agony; though this last is not an emotion, as such, but the result of so many vying for attention, the mob that is really only many violent men consumed with a single passion, the same mind. i can still feel the bruises from their clubs and harshly spoken words.
time disappears... for a brief while, i no longer exist. i will be awoken to reality again a few days later, as the officers on my porch take the time to explain the legal ramifications for talking to my wife. i shroud myself in oblivion, acceptance being driven down my throat as i beg for a few moments to drown in the incomprehension... but they are not interested in my whims, only in protecting the innocent. how can i ever get on that side of the fence? all i want to know is why. all i want is to know what is in her heart. but i can read. no tresspassing. this means me. the razor wire is unnecessary. really, it is.
the next few days blur, time lurching like a piano down a flight of stairs... i try to sing to the jangling melody. it doesn't work. i blame my voice as i pick up the scattered remains at the bottom of the stairs.
court. the cool explanation of a woman i barely recognize, distant, sterile. the doctor operates. she explains away our life together as though she were reading the contents of a box of cereal, you see, judge, there was really just too much riboflavin and not nearly enough vitamin b12, and to be honest, i was already consuming 90 per cent of my dialy recommended dietary intake of fear, anger, and msg (i note her lack of irony in this, a preservative, when preservation was so far from her mind...). so you see, your honor, based on the advice of my nutritional advisor, i've decided on a new diet... no more shawn for breakfast, it's ruining my appetite.
i'm sorry beyond words. i've swallowed battery acid. all i can taste is my burning lungs. it is strangely satisfying, although i feel i should be doing more.
another few days stagger along, chained convicts in a road gang, shuffling when all i want is to see them run.
i clean the house. then i clean it again. i'm living on a diet that consists mostly of eggnog. god bless the noggy goodness. something had to be good. the house is spotless. i am unclean.
the 23rd now. time to leave. arrangements have been made. the pastor of the local pentecostal church drives me to the airport. presses a crumpled 20 dollar bill into my hand, wishes me a merry christmas. never have i felt less merry, but i loved him in that moment with something beyond myself, and it made me breathe for the first time in weeks.
and so i land, broken, alone, at the house of my parents. i have no gifts. although i left 2 for my wife, unable to bear the idea of leaving her at this time, even if it was her choice. correction, i do have gifts, if you can call them that... a bag she sewed for my mother, a quilt she put together for my sister and her husband. these aren't gifts, they're millstones. i wish i hadn't brought anything. i feel out of place as i open the things people bought for me, knowing at least a few of them were meant to be shared with her. christmas.
new year was better... time spent with the young adults of the church, in the days before the consequences of my life separated me from their fellowship. good times, a chance to forget sadness, to revel in fireworks and skating and cold air and snow and bonfires and hope. i eat my fill, but i am still starving.
so much is lost.
o discordia.
so what am i thinking about this christmas? strangely, i'm thinking about christ. he might have been killed on what we call easter, but that was really christmas, at least in the only way that really mattered. and as he gave his life, he loved us. as we destroyed him, all he had for us was love, compassion, and forgiveness. i don't understand this. it makes me feel small and petty and inadequate, wallowing in my sorrow and loneliness and a love that i will feel forever but never fulfill, knowing that the bitterness is not right, that it's not from God, that in a perfect world, my love would not depend on someone else's love for me, because we were nowhere near loving christ as we murdered him. we were afraid. the slaughter was justified. and still he loved.

i don't believe in new year's resolutions. but i believe, or at least desperately, desperately want to believe, in being able to change before it's too late, in learning and growing and moving past the things that hurt us into a place where they don't have to.
so this is my season, this is my moment of hope in change. and in this moment, i will try to love as christ loved, try to abandon the sense of selfishness that leaves me feeling jilted, because he was jilted first, his own people didn't want him. and he loved. i want this love. i want to stop hurting and start living. i can rise from this, if i believe i can. i can love and not make it just about me. i must.
i will always love my wife, will always feel her with me, will always be one with her. but i can not make her choose me any more than god can make me choose him. so i will learn from how it feels not to be chosen, and try, in whatever way i can, to choose him, to choose me, to choose life, to choose love.
to all my friends, i expect to be held accountable in this above all other things. if i am not loving you, tell me. i will not be selfish, even if it's what i want to do (and what other definition does selfishness have?), and hopefully, my love will matter, and if you feel like offering something like it in return, i will not turn it away.
i have learned something.
i love you all.
and if i don't, i will. i'm trying.