best yet

A list of reasons why this is the best Christmas ever is really just an inversion of all the reasons why the last two sucked.

No members of my family died this Christmas.

No members of my family contracted weird, 24 hour vomiting viruses this Christmas (like the last two years running).

My remaining grandmother, technically the last grandparent I have, was and still is in wonderful health this Christmas. There was no medicine, no breathing machine, no fear of death this Christmas.

I was not unhappy this Christmas.

I did not fantasise about getting run over by Santa's sleigh this Christmas.

Like the last two years I did end up sprinting around Basingstoke at quarter to 4 on Christmas Eve trying to buy last minute presents, however I managed to get everybody things they liked this year and the incredible pathos didn't quite kill me this year.

This year, this difference is not just the circumstance, the notable absence of terrible bad luck. This difference is about me.

If it had happened again, the annual sojourn into family chaos, the half-hearted celebration overshadowed by the fact that everybody feels like shit - if that had been my Christmas I'm not saying I wouldn't have hated it. I'm not saying the inner child wouldn't have gotten the better of me and had to sneak me off for a cry after lunch. I'm saying that it wouldn't have broken me this year.

Maybe I feel stronger because December didn't shit on me; maybe December waits til I'm good and broken before he drops his daks.

Maybe. Maybe.

Or maybe fortune was on my side and this Christmas when I feel happy just happened to turn out ok.

This Christmas when I feel happy.

I'm ok. And it's been what, 6 years? since I felt that, felt uninterrupted and whole.

Sometimes, unmedicated and relatively sober, godless and loved, I can hardly remember what the Bad Place felt like. But I know that things aren't simple, that habits old and bad die hard and slow, and depression is the oldest and baddest one I know.

Perhaps that's why. Other than this incredible need to say thank-you, perhaps it's that fear that sends me itching for church.

Perhaps it's just the time of year.