The Remains of Christmas

Note: includes mental health problems, dissociation with one's own identity, mentions of death (although rather ambiguous) and grief

This Christmas someone had misplaced the stockings. They were of different colors, they were striped and they had these cheap pictures printed on them of famous cartoon characters and they really didn't put me in any Christmas cheer. I hate those kinds of stockings, those ones that look all cheap and that they had with quite some certainty been bought in the supermarket.

Mum never bought those. I don't know how, but she always bought nicer ones. Mum certainly wasn't the type to knit or sew them herself. She would have, if she knew how to. She definitely would've knitted me my stockings, she would've even made sure I really liked them before hanging them up, unlike these people. She would have woken me up on Christmas day with a happy embrace and a wonderful laughter, unlike these people.

These people, they were the kinds to buy new stockings every year, and every year they would be of worse and worse quality, they would shimmer even though they were supposed to be made out of cotton and if you touched them the fabric felt way too light to be that of stockings. And I supposed, that if you would breathe on them you would burn a hole in them. And if you held them up to the light you could see through them. At some point I wondered if next year, or perhaps the year after that, they would just be shreds of fabric. I can't imagine what kind of a twisted mind one must have, to end up with this kind of taste in Christmas decorations.

It's not like my Mum could afford stockings that were of better quality. But they were nonetheless, indescribably better. It's not like my Mum was much richer than these people were either, on the contrary, Ms. Tarmann worked at a university and together with Mr. Tarmann, they owned a house in the center of Copenhagen. My Mum on the other hand, could barely find a place to live. It wasn't her fault though. It was the landlords that kicked us out every other month or so. It's not like we had made a mess of the place or anything, but the tourists just paid better than the locals, and even though my mother never did accept it, we were just in the way. All those landlords, the big, hairy, fat bunch of them, they simply made more money off of those tourists, probably a few hundred a night, which was seemingly more than enough for them and the house would be empty for the remainder of the year. And who cared for some stupid mother and her child and where they were going to live anyways? Me and my mother, we, were old fashion.

Ms. and Mr. Tarmann, respectively, they had no such worries. They had seen the countless reports on television about kids in war that had no house and no food and whenever these shows would come on, they would start moaning and weeping about how terrible it must be for them and how they hoped the world would become a better place. But that is about the closest they had ever come to any tragedy.

Ms. and Mr. Tarmann were impulsive people. They bought themselves and their family members what they wanted for Christmas without much thought of what it was, whether it would be appreciated or what the item's cost was. The more they bought, the happier they were. Or at least, the happier they thought they were. The entire house was full of stuff. Stuff, stuff, stuff, stuff. Their daughter, a bit younger than me but not awfully so, was the biggest stuff lover in that house. She would buy expensive clothes every other week. Earrings from Tiffany, underwear from Victoria's Secret, cashmere pullovers, oysters for 80 krones each, eat out whenever her parents weren't home. No wonder they had no money left over for some proper stockings.

I still cannot explain how terrible these stockings are. They hung there like balloons of a party that no one had attended. They hung in this house and collected its bad atmosphere. They hung there out of the sole reason that gravity was attracting them and their normal force was fighting it. I didn't look forward to opening them. Even if part of me did see joy in that nostalgic thought of opening it and eating the mandarins and peanuts and chocolates that were hidden inside, and laughing and smiling and crunching them between my jaw. They weren't going to be there anyhow and I knew that opening those stockings, only to find disappointment (for the Danish did not celebrate Christmas with mandarins and peanuts) was futile. And I wanted to shield myself from that disappointment.

My presence in the Ms. and Mr. Tarmann's house was alien. I didn't believe in it. I refused to acknowledge that I lived there. I felt as though someone had taken my home and rearranged its furniture and moved all the walls around and painted some of them grey and hung up pictures of strangers and took the whole house and placed it in a city on the other side of the continent. It's not like they had asked before relocating it. They just did it. And I had to swallow that.

I haven't seen my mother since they did that to me. The last I saw of her, she was telling me to get into the car with her. But I didn't. I was selfish, I ran up the stairs and hid there instead. And she came after me running and then it hit her. And I heard noise. I hoped it hadn't hit her but that it had hit someone else. And when I came back down hours later she wasn't there, wasn't anywhere. They had cleaned everything up. They had cleaned her up. Like her remains were something dirty that had to be cleaned up.

All of a sudden I had these people telling me that my relatives, the Tarmanns, wanted to see me and that they were so happy they could take me in and that they hadn't seen me in years. The police were there and they put this blanket over my shoulders and told me that I was going to be rescued and that I could go live somewhere safe.

And no one ever said my mother's name again. And she was lost to history from that moment on.

It's the services who did that. At least, that is who I blame it on. They took me here. To the Tarmann's. Consciously, they took me away from her. For my own good or whatever. They did this to me willingly. They must have. It must have been them.

I will never forgive what happened that night. Or day. It has fostered a confusion inside of me that is great enough to make me forget what has happened entirely. 

To forget, is a destiny I wish would engulf me. Because every time I would repeat a memory in my head. I feared to lose a detail of it, the look of her face or the sound of her footsteps or the caress of her hand. I felt like I was losing her all over again.

Mum was ever able to give me very many presents. Most of them were drawings she had made for me, of Santa Clause, or of us skiing, or of a Christmas tree or something. The others were small things she could afford, something stupid she bought off one of those online stores. We did have meat for Christmas, but it wasn't comparable to the meat of my Danish family. It certainly wasn't anything she would have bought at the butcher's. Who the hell knew where she had bought it. But it tasted better nonetheless. Perhaps it was the dresser, or how she seasoned it, or perhaps she was always lucky in finding a really good steak or perhaps the meat section worker at the supermarket - or wherever on earth she got it from - felt sorry for us and gave us a better one, perhaps he even saved the best one for us. 

My Mum would go to great lengths to make Christmas special for me. The stockings, those really nice ones, she filled them up to the brim with candy. Even though she sometimes had to pile the candies on top of each other vertically, so that the ends, where the plastic wrappings swirl, would occupy more space. Or if she would sometimes have to wrinkle up old newspaper and stuff the bottom of the stocking with it, so it would seem bigger and fuller. Nonetheless Christmas was better. Christmas was better even though we spent it on the street.

Christmas was better under no roof, than under this roof. I hated the Tarmanns. I got sick of those imbeciles! Of their stupid stockings that aren't appropriate for this time of the year. Of their stupid daughter who has it all handed to her and never learned what life was all about. Of their moaning about how terrible it all is and their ingratitude for life. Of their ignorance. Of the fact that they never even asked me what my life was like before. Or what I would like it to be like. Or what my dreams and passions were. I hated them. I hated this house. I hated the entire world for sitting back and watching as these things happened to me. As they took me away from her. As they put me here. As they killed her. I hated the world for forgetting me. And I wanted to scream out loud that this had happened to me and that it hurt like hell and demand why no one would help me. And then the world would probably sit back and look at me and give me no answer. And they would blame the terrorists in Africa or the politicians in America and not themselves. Never themselves. 

I guess it wasn't these people or those people or my mother or whatever she seasoned that stupid pig, or chicken, or cow, or whatever it was, with. It even wasn't my mother. I missed myself. I missed being someone and being recognized as a someone. I was no one here. I missed having a family that I belonged to. A family that would have given me a name and a surname.  A family, whose genes I shared, who were capable of loving me, like Mum had loved me. Or no family at all. But feel good about myself nonetheless. To go outside happily and content and without the weight and without the conscience of my fate.

I lifted my gaze off the stockings. I looked out the window. Outside it was snowing and there were still people cycling even though the snow was at knee length. And there was a man shuffling the snow away on the street. And a crowd of people were laughing and moving towards the big street, towards the north. And two of their kids stopped to look at the bags in the bag boutique. And the neighbors had already turned on their lights. And all the way in the house on the other side of the street I spotted one lady hanging up her stockings. I couldn't quite make out what they looked like. They were probably nicer than these. And in the window next to the stocking lady I saw this other lady preparing dinner. Beef and potatoes, yummy.Except that it could have been literally anything else. It could have been pommes frites and fish. Or it could have been tomato soup with grilled cheese . Or it could have been casserole. She could have gone out and ordered fast food and was now plating it to not feel bad about it. Or she was preparing an apero with chips and pretzels and olives and mozzarella and other fine cheeses and wine. Or she could have been doing the goddamn dishes!It was an uncertainty I didn't have the luxury of knowing.

In my life, in this life, there were few things I had the luxury of knowing. I didn't get to know why I lived here and I couldn't explain to myself how it had come to be this way either. I didn't know what happened inside of me, I didn't know what future was approaching me. I didn't know if I got to decide on it anyhow. I didn't know myself, where I had gone nor where I was headed. I was as labile as the stockings I told you about, whose only masters were the forces of the world, and where they would pull, they would move.  It wasn't untrue. I moved whenever and wherever those around me pulled.

Every day, I woke up and went to school and came back when the sun had set and ate and put up with Ms. and Mr. Tarmann and washed myself and then slept. Perhaps I read the odd book. It was a routine I was privileged to have but was limited in the joys it provided. In that routine, I wasn't required to know myself, where I had gone and where I was headed. And thank God for that! The everyday allowed me to be freed of the otherwise crushing thought of my mother. She became someone I didn't dare to think of. 

I wasn't any more productive than a drunkard who spends his days in bed or an old man who has a bad fever. I moved my body, but that really was about the most effort I wound up. I hated my life. I hated what it was history to. I missed this stupid bastard of a child that I was. That child that lost itself in all the turmoil.  Alone and cursed to be forever without a family. Without a home. Without a destination. Without a lover. Alone I was. Like a picked flower in the field.

And it was then that the stockings started to sag and shimmer and just hang there. Hang there like these lumps of fabric that had absolutely no place in the world. Like these despicable socks that would be thrown out next year anyway. Their existence was futile, even more so than mine, it was useless to buy them and hang them up for twenty-four days and throw them out or cram them in a box and cram that box in the cellar for the remainder of the year. It was a nonsensical activity. And I really started to hate Christmas. Believe me or don't, but I once loved Christmas. That- terrible and obscene holiday, that was as nonsensical as my life.

They hadn't just taken my mother. They had taken me, too.