Now that there's not much more left of Christmas other than empty cake trays and plates ready for washing up, we're making our first and final steps towards the new year. Although it is probably associated with being the national holiday of part time alcoholics, we can't forget its most common tradition: the yearly rant. I was preparing myself to make fun of all of the pseudo-intellectuals and politically aware social activists, who would write angry Facebook posts about how shit this year has been (just like all the years before that), how many significant people have died, and how the whole world is probably turning into North Korea. But don't forget, you can always wish for a better future- only to go through the exact same routine again next year.
The hypocrite that I am, I'm about to have a rant myself. Not about the year and the upcoming ending of it, not about global events, but rather something inbetween. It's a rant about my Christmas experience this year, and perhaps even what it taught me. In case you didn't notice, the latter is definitely a lie I'm trying to tell myself in order to cope with my moodiness and frustration over the fact that things never turn out the way you want them to, but then again, when did I ever think I was significant enough to be able to control that? Spoiler alert: things didn't turn out the way I wanted them to.
The song Silent Night sounds exactly like what you would expect it to sound like. It's a beautifully melodic and calm Christmas carol, that you wouldn't exactly hear in the background of a scene in a gangster movie, where two guys are about to rob a bank. Unless the film you're watching is a comedy, which is clearly making fun of how Christmas is another tool and brilliant marketing strategy used by capitalism to feed our materialistic and greedy tendencies, while living the illusion of Christmas being about love and family, and some guy who was clearly on something if he believed he could walk on water. Although the song doesn't actually reflect what Christmas is like anymore, at least it still pretty much applied to me this year. Especially if Night would've been put in plural, and Silent would be transformed to Muted. In fact, my version would probably be more like Muted Christmas.
When I was younger, I found it quite astounding how our bodies were just able to fix our wounds, broken bones and illnesses, almost entirely by themselves. If only we could speed up the process, we'd basically turn into superheroes with boring costumes, bad catchphrases and hair that's in the way during every rescue. My problem this Christmas wasn't just that my superpowers were too slow to call them superpowers. They had simply left me completely. Abandoned me. Booked a trip to Ibiza and gone on holiday. I don't know. What I do know though, is the fact that I, including everyone around me, whether that was at work, my boyfriend, or when my college group went to observe a court case (I'm so sorry Your Honour), was already fed up with my cough two weeks before the actual apocalypse broke loose.
It's my seventh day of being voiceless, and I wish I was coughing. I've spent each and every single one of my days back in Norway doing nothing else but feeling miserable about my situation, and the absurdity of coming all the way to this country so I'd be able to talk to my family again, and now talking is exactly what I can't do. It's the frustration involved in waking up every morning only to get disappointed again that my voice has still not booked a flight back to where it belongs, only hoping that tomorrow will be better. In those six days, I've missed out on one party, at least four opportunities where I could've caught up with my friends again (who I see approximately two or three times a year), one trip to town, a walk in the December sun and most importantly, a Christmas I had been looking forward to since the beginning of December.
It's almost ironic how I used my voice to express how much I was looking forward to my family's modest Christmas traditions, and how much I suck every possible positive experience out of them, although they're so limited. I talked about how much I love spending time with my loved ones and seeing their faces light up as they read their Christmas cards and open the presents that I so carefully picked out for them. This time, Christmas didn't feel like Christmas at all, and not knowing where I'll be next year makes me feel as if some part of me died and will never get the chance to experience Christmas like it was before. I will never get the chance to experience Christmas being the way I was before. Maube I should've titled this blog post A Nightmare Before Christmas, but then this would be inaccurate, too, since the nightmare lasted way longer than Christmas. Tragic, I know.
After I was done fighting the urge to rant about my oh-so horrible situation on Twitter, I noticed that it was more than missing out on traditions, parties and seeing friends that bothered me. I started feeling uncomfortable in my own skin, not being able to express myself in the overly enthusiastic way that I'm used to. I wasn't able to fulfil my desire to entertain, to talk and experience without my voice, no matter how energetic each and every cell of my body felt. My voice makes up so much of my personality, and determines so much how I experience everyday life, that I wasn't even able to be myself without it. It's as if one part of my body shut down, and I was perhaps 80% Annie, but certainly not 100%.
Now that I've been voiceless for a week, I'm starting to wonder who I am. Who am I, when I'm not speaking? Who am I, when I can't judge myself by the way I work and talk to costumers at the bar, interviewees before using their quotes in a piece, college mates and friends when I try to sell them the idea of being worth of their company? My voice is me, or at least it translates who I am into (mostly) comprehensible words and sentences. If that crucial part of me is gone, what other ways can I use to remind myself of my identity? I could simply write, but after about four or five hours, I've reached my limit of how long I can isolate myself to write before turning insane. Books and TV shows have been my escape, too, but there's only so many chapters and episodes you can absorb before even that becomes tedious.
I've come to understand that my voice opens up new doors and opportunities that other parts of me don't hold the key to. It's the tolk that helps you out when trying to express who you are and what you stand for, the catalyser for making a night an experience worth to document and remember. Your voice adds so much to an experience, and not being able to use it, makes me feel like a prisoner in my own body. It might sound overly dramatic, and of course, I agree, it completely is, but if I don't get to rant by using my voice, at least I can complain about exactly that by writing about it.
