"Still a Great Year (I Don't Want to Wait for Christmas)"

This Christmas, I was going to stay silent
Because I have nothing to add to the conversation
I have no new perspective on race relations
Or the state of our nation
Or a pending Covid Vaccination

I have nothing to say about Trump's Tiny Desk
Or the fact that I didn't win NPR's Tiny Desk Contest
So this Christmas, I was going to rest

Then the other day I was looking for some feel-good nostalgia to drown out the endless noise for even an hour. Something like watching Dawson's Creek, which just got added to Netflix. But as I curled up with a tasty cup tea, eagerly awaiting the pleading sound of Paula Cole's voice telling us she doesn't want to wait, I was greeted by some OTHER song, a song that is definitely not Paula Cole's classic, "I Don't Want to Wait," also known as "THE THEME SONG TO DAWSON'S CREEK," And I was horrified to learn that Netflix had simply chosen not to license the song. And in that moment I knew that I had finally reached my limit.

In a year underscored by the constant hum of anxiety as I calculate how much longer I have until my unemployment runs out; a year in which Hamilton streamed online and I had to again argue with my mother about how much I fucking hate Hamilton; a year in which the extent of my physical human contact since March 15 has been one good hug, six okay hugs, a few times when I accidentally brushed a friend's arm in conversation, and a haircut, it was hearing another song at the start of Dawson's Creek that finally broke my heart, because that show and that song are inextricably tied to a wide eyed, purer version of myself, who I am unwilling to abandon. A me who believed in true love. A me who believed that my songs would change the world and would have never imagined that my biggest accomplishment in a year would be mounting a hook on the wall to hang my masks from so that I stop misplacing them. An uncorrupted young boy who wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of the sentence “The algorithm is suppressing normal posts in an effort to promote reels and compete with TikTok.” Well, I refuse to give up on that boy, and I refuse to alter him, rewrite him, or revise him in any way.

Because in a cankered time in which a toxic vacuous swath of this country has come to genuinely believe that the Democrats and the Jews are running a secret sex slavery ring, and that the sole hope for salvation is a man who has demonstrably and unfailingly shown that his only concern is his own fragile ego, sometimes it feels like the only thing tethering me to sanity is a memory of a better time.
A time when I would spend Christmas full of bright hope at my Grandparents house instead of thanking God that my Grandparents aren't alive to see this. A time before our phones happened to our brains, a time before Tom Cruise happened to Katie Holmes. A time that is meant to be soundtracked by Paula Fucking Cole.

So if you still believe in love this Christmas, if you still believe that there is room for kindness in this wretched world, if you still believe life can be as beautiful as I once innocently thought it was, then for the sake of all that is true and pure: open up your morning light, and say a little prayer for I.