When you were 7, Santa asked what you wanted for Christmas.
You thought for a while.
You looked up at him, and through the gap in your teeth escaped the words
"I want everything to be okay."
"Well of course everything is going to be okay!" He chuckled, through his wise, white beard. "Everything is okay during Christmas."
You're older now so you realize that must have sounded weird coming from a 7 year old.
Most of the kids in line asked for a dog or a tonka truck. You don't even know what you were referring to.
Something always felt off for you. Wherever you were.
You thought puberty would shove that feeling aside, but with it came armpit hair and a whole lot of new emotions you didn't know you were capable of feeling.
You started realizing that there were things that made that feeling louder.
Things that were unavoidable.
Sometimes you wished your parents would just shut their traps forever.
Everyday at school you wondered why you surrounded yourself with the people you did.
Most of all, you had no idea why you were the way you were.
You wished you could be stupid.
Stupid people have it easy because they don't think about the complicated things in life.
How depressing our existence really is. How you can't really do anything about that, either.
But you had no idea who you would even be without that constant feeling. God knows you were too lazy to do something about it, too.
So you let it fester.
Grow.
Let it take over your entire being until looking down at your hands made you feel like they belonged to somebody else.
And those hands were coming to scratch your eyes out.
It's been years since you made that wish to Santa. It never came true so maybe you were on the naughty list.
You wonder what's inside the Gingerbread House after all this time.