Saturday, 12.26.2015 - 4:47 pm.
Christmas has come and gone. It was all right. Andrew cried a little bit before he fell asleep on the 22th, in loving memory of his brother, and that was all that happened regarding that subject. Me, I've been sick with a cold that never fully develops for almost a week.
(For the record: to me, "Christmas" has always been on the 24th: you give and get presents, get together with people and get all dressed up and have a dinner party with the family. It's a cultural thing, I guess. The 25th is for enjoying your presents and eating leftovers. I guess that's what Boxing Day is for, here in the UK? Live and learn).
We spent the afternoon of the 24th with part of the Chilean community in a celebration that, for Andrew and for me, went on for too long. The family-like company and the food were still much appreciated though. We walked back home at around 7 pm, with a gift each from our Secret Santa (mine even had treats for our cats!) and a few chocolate-and-coffee cake slices someone did not eat and that I was not going to throw in the trash. It was cold but bearable and there was the full moon above us as we walked home. It was a nice moment.
At home, he cooked a nice Christmas meal for the two of us, and we messaged and/or called our families and some friends. Then we opened presents! We cheated, we were supposed to open them at midnight but we didn't wait until then. We got cool stuff from my family, Andrew loved the t-shirt and gamer mousepad from me and the sweater "from the cats". AND HE DID GET ME A GLOBE (and Beatle books "from the cats", bought in charity shops which I love)! It is much cooler than I expected, it's all silvery and it is also a lamp. I have learned a lot about the world in the few days I've had it, I'm always making it turn and finding places I didn't know existed. Or I look at it after reading international news. Having it it's as amazing as I thought it'd be, it's so precious.
I wasn't as brokenhearted as I expected about being so far away from my family. That's good, I guess. I hope they all had a wonderful time wherever they were. And I do hope we will get to be together, all of us, next year. But my parents are aging and with my mother's cancer scares we're not as sure of "getting all together" in the future as we once were. I pray we will be able to make it next year.
Yesterday I also got to talk to my best friend Victoria, with whom I had not talked to personally in...I don't know, a year, at least? We text each other constantly but it is not the same. We talked for two hours and it was wonderful, all those in-jokes that had been sleeping in us for ages were released and we laughed so hard.
However, she is in the process of separating from her husband. She had told me she wanted to talk about it, and that was months ago, but we hadn't had the chance. I imagined they were still trying to figure things out but no, she has made her decision and it's only a matter of finding a place for her to move out of their apartment. She's been so lonely since she moved to another country to be with him (that is not a loss for her though, the chance to get out of our chaotic home country is most welcomed). It started out as a good marriage but it seems he thought that after the wedding the hard part was over and no further work was required. No intimacy, no shared time, difficulty for him to see her point of view. So much that other people came in between them, from both sides. It makes me sad and I'm just rooting for my friend to get out of that loneliness and go find the things that will make her feel good again.
Oh, dear.
Anyway, that is all for now. The holidays have been quiet and that's nice. Andrew and I have been resting and watching movies. And so it will be until the new year rolls around.
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