Like A Kid on Christmas Eve

The Anticipation is Killing Me

 

My brother is twenty-one years old. He’s the youngest. And he was always the one to wake up first on Christmas morning. Six or seven a.m, our mom having been up until maybe only four hours prior playing Santa. The rule was no opening presents until the coffee was ready.

Of course I was always thrilled when Fletcher, my brother, would pad into the room my sister and I shared, launching the conspiracy of how best to rouse Mom and start the festivities. I myself had probably barely slept, so rapt with excitement about the day to come. I don’t usually have trouble sleeping, I never have. The only times I can’t sleep are when I’m a) sick or b) sick with anticipation.

December always felt like the longest month of the year. I remember counting down the weeks, days, hours, being so keyed up on Christmas Eve that I would have to calm myself with assurances about the inevitability of the passage of time. “Even if you just sat here and did nothing, eventually tomorrow would come.” And every year, the clock would turn, I would eventually shut my eyes, and like hitting fast forward, when I opened them it would be Christmas, and Fletcher would be bopping around trying to get us to come peek at the tree.

For my mother I realize now, it was the opposite. It takes a lot of work to give your three kids the most special day of the year. For her, Christmas morning probably felt like a deadline approaching with meteoric velocity.

Let me just say that, for our family, Christmas was huge. The traditions stretched out over a four-day period. Christmas Day was a three-venue affair. Each detail had been honed into a ritual to be followed with near-spiritual devotion.

Plus, it’s my birthday. 12/25/87, 5:32 p.m. They gave me a red and green striped hat at the hospital.

That might be why I couldn’t sleep the night before: this was it. My day. My one day. For the whole year. Jesus Christ, it had better be good.

Last year was the first time Fletcher didn’t wake up first. I think my sister and I actually had to drag him out of bed. Everyone was equally enthusiastic about coffee, not just Mom. Fletcher’s in college, perhaps exhaustion outweighs anticipation. Maybe things just aren’t quite as exciting anymore.

Or at least, maybe Christmas isn’t. I’ve started to feel the same pressure my mother does, the preparatory scrambling. Like most adults, I no longer will the hours to fly by as I count down to being a year older. December twenty-fifth just isn’t that thing that I want to fast forward to anymore.

But the fast-forward impulse is still very much there. I constantly yearn to up the pace on every aspect of my life. Waiting to move forward with a project has become one of the more excruciating experiences I know. I meet someone I like and want to know every single thing about them, instantly. When I’m at rehearsal for a play, I’m thinking about band practice. When I’m at band practice, my mind is on going out after. When we’re out, I’m back to thinking about texting some boy, probably so that I can find out everything about him faster.

Is it an attention-span thing? It’s true, I get sick of the projects, often before they can progress to their truest form. I send off scripts before they’re ready. I play people demos of tracks before they even sound like music. I get bored with the guys, maybe because I didn’t actually want to know as much about them as I thought I did. 

It’s no coincidence that I work in restaurants— if nothing is happening on one table, I go check on another, and then another, in a constant rotation of activity.  

Someone who knows me pretty well told me my main problem is that I’m impatient. That I just need to stay out of my own way while things develop. But I think it’s more than that— if something is interesting to me, I want all of it at once.  

It’s sort of a binge thing. I’ll listen to the same song on repeat for an hour, every day for weeks. Then I’ll never listen to it again. Wouldn’t it be better to maybe let a little anticipation build? To continue to enjoy the song at a more moderate level for months or perhaps even years? Is it possible that I would actually come to love the song more, under such circumstances?

But my brain is always always always always going. It’s like a little kid that I need to keep constantly entertained. Otherwise these weird little fingers of doubt with long dirty fingernails creep up around the back and start to pick apart everything I’ve ever said or done or made or dreamed. So if what I want to hear is that song, I won't stop thinking about it. I'll just put it on repeat until I've gotten my fix.

I’ve started having mini panic attacks when the subway stops moving between stations. I freak out when people don’t walk on escalators. Recently I had an acting gig where all I had to do was lie there— literally, just lie there, for hours. It was the most challenging role of my life.    

Thich Nhat Hanh writes about the man who peels and eats a whole orange without realizing what it tastes like. His mind is working, but he’s not thinking about what he’s doing. I have really not been tasting the oranges lately.

The thing about Christmas is that once it’s over, it’s over. And then you have to wait a whole year to get so excited you can’t sleep again. At a certain point I realized that those hours I was wishing away were actually pretty sweet. The anticipation— that was the good part. Same thing goes for the time between an audition and when the casting is announced. Those are the days when you actually get to picture yourself in the role. Or when you start seeing someone you like, and you’re half daydreaming about them but half agonizing over whether or not you’re actually going to go out with them again. The “if” that accompanies the “when” is what makes it so sparkly.

And what wouldn’t you do to return to those days when you weren’t sure whether or not Jimmy even liked you back? Especially given that, after it turned out that Jimmy definitely did like you back, it also turned out that he was kind of a jerk who would break your heart six months later and who never did the dishes. You’d give anything to go back to the sweetness of waiting for the phone to ring.

So what I’d like to do is learn to appreciate the fun parts more. I want to slow my brain enough that I can get stoked on the early phases. The possibility. The unopened presents. And maybe take a little more time with my creative processes. Perhaps take the time to get to know people as part of an organic process, as opposed to binge-dating and burning out. Maybe not beat myself up too much for still having a service industry job as I embark on my twenty-sixth year.

Because this is the fun part. Being a kid on Christmas Eve is the best! Maybe we can get up early bop around with excitement, like Fletcher used to, and actually just have a good time doing it. This year I’m infusing olive oil as a Christmas gift for my family. It’s taking weeks, but it’s totally going to be worth the wait.