Grown-Up Christmas List

 

Grown-Up
Christmas List

Do you remember me?
I sat upon your knee
I wrote to you
With childhood fantasies

Well, I’m all grown up now
And still need help somehow
I’m not a child
But my heart still can dream

So here’s my lifelong wish
My grown up christmas list
Not for myself
But for a world in need

No more lives torn apart
and wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts

And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown up christmas list

As children we believed
The grandest sight to see
Was something lovely
Wrapped beneath our tree

Well heaven surely knows
That packages and bows
Can never heal
A hurting human soul

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts

And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown up christmas list

What is this illusion called the innocence of youth?
Maybe only in our blind belief can we ever find the truth . . .

No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts

And everyone would have a friend
And right would always win
And love would never end, oh
This is my grown up christmas list

This is my only life-long wish
This is my grown up christmas list

 

I say the song speaks for itself.  My grown-up Christmas list.  I no longer wrote to Santa.  I was never really one of those kids who dilligently did every year, anyway.  I know that there were times I did.  Once I even wrote one for my mom to take to the post office to “mail to the north pole.”

Then there was one, I remember, I’d asked for a puppy.  And my dad had written, left handed, that I couldn;t have one right now, because it would fight with the cats, and besides, I should wait till “I was older and a bit more responsible” to get a puppy.

What would be on my Christmas list now?  Objects, mindsets, wants, needs, anything?  Well, objects first.  I would love those two five-figure Lord of the Rings sets, and the Barbie and Ken Galadriel and Legolas.  Maybe Young Sherlock Holmes, Baron Munchausen, or the Princess Bride on DVD.  Aside from that . . . I have no idea.  I can’t even imagine what people are getting me this year.  I don’t even know what I’m getting some people.  All I know is I intend on going to either the Monmouth or the Woodbridge Mall this Monday after work, and I’m gonna look around at every store I can until I find something for everyone else I need to buy for.  And I’m still dying t get that shirt at Hot Topic.  It’s red, and it looks sort of like something a lady pirate would wear.  Or at least, that’s what I picture.  But I’ve been good, and self-controlled and the like, and haven’t gotten it.

Which leads into what I want as a mindeset, as well as the wants and needs.  I want a more controlled mindset.  I know why I go to stores and buy objects.  I need to control those impulses, and stop myself, and actually actively work to save up money.  Well, okay, I’ll actively work to save after the holidays and Mike’s birthday.  I’m getting him a killer gift this year, and it kills me that he reads this so I can’t say what it is and get opinions on some things for it.

Anyway.  I also want more control over myself.  My biggest want this year, I think, is that I want to lose weight.  I need to, as well.  I should look better than this.  I can look better than this.  I have looked better than this, though maybe not by as much as I’d like.  Still, the fact remains, I’m not someone who should be overweight.  My mom grew up thin as a rail.  And for those of you who have seen her presently, I know that’s probably a shocking thing.  She gained weight in college, though, and at a couple of points in her life has gotten in off, but always put it back on, sometimes with excess, sometimes not.  But she’s been overweight for as long as I can remember without the help of a videotape.  And I’m looking at myself and thinking, “I don’t want to look like that.”  I don’t want to become that.  I want to have the type of body I belong in, and this isn’t it.

I’ve always had body image problems.  Not the whole liking myself stuff, though I’ve had problems with it, too.  But what I have the biggest problems with is, “If I lost weight, what would I look like?”  I mean, I look around at the different stick-like people I know, or the tall, slender types with toned muscles, and think, “Would this be me?”  Yet looked at logically, I know that’s completely absurd.  I’m not built like that, I’ll never be built like that, and it’s ridiculous to think that I would ever appear that way.

So, that’s part of it.  I’ve recently discovered that I’d probably look a lot like Shannon.  Since everything with the gluton allergy, she has lost weight.  Not a clue how much, or if she actually needed to lose that much, (though considering what she’s now restricted to with food, she didn’t really have much choice in the losing weight field,) but you can tell she has, simply by how she dresses now.  When I first met her, she would wear a one-piece swimsuit with a T-shirt over it.  This past summer, she had a two piece spaghetti strap tank top and shorts.

Yeah.  So, I’d probably appear more like her if I lost weight.  And it’s something that I really want to do.  I know I’ve said it before.  Maybe not in here, but in other journals, or to myself, but never truly followed through with it.  This time, I’m following through.  And I actually have impotus this time.  About two weeks ago, I bought this gorgeous satiny skirt, even though it doesn’t quite fit me.  I’m determined to fit into that skirt by Christmas, or at least shortly thereafter.  So, I have to lose weight, because I want to be able to wear that skirt!

There’s another outfit as well, that I tried this with.  I actually have it hung up on hangers insi

de my closet.  It’s a pair of bellbottom jeans that I was able to wear a few years ago, (though the damned things nearly cut me in half even then!) and this halter top shirt.  It ties in the back, and has this fringe around the bottom that’s really nice.  I *can* wear it now, but I don’t like how I look in it.

I’m still not happy.  And considering the season, that’s really, truly strange and even more depression-causing for me.  I think I pinpointed another cause, though.  Mike Keller once again.  Mike told me his views on Christmas gifts.  Not Christmas itself, but the gifts involved and exchanged.  And, as so many other times in my life, I don’t feel good enough.  I feel inferior.  I feel like anything that I could get him wouldn’t be good enough, and that he’d just wind up resenting it, and consequently, possibly, me.  I don’t even know if that’s what would happen, but I’m afraid it would.  Will it stop me from getting him a gift and bringing it over there as close to Christmas day as I can?  No, probably not.  But it does hamper my ability to decide what to get him, considering I’m feeling inferior and like nothing I get him will be good enough, and that’s NOT HOW I’M SUPPOSED TO FEEL RIGHT NOW!!!!

::Sighs::  I’m hatin’ this . . .   I just want to cheer up.  I want to see the lights on the neighbor’s house.  I don’t know why, but I think, I hope, that once I see them, that Christmas spirit will just come back to me.

I always did feel peaceful looking at those lights . . .

This is my grown-Up Christmas list . . . I’ll tell in future entries how much of it actually came to be.