I have to pretend it's all tinsel and peace on earth

Hey, Merry Christmas.

You sound down, farmboy. Is everything okay?

I don't know what to say, man. Christmas always ends up being sad and confusing. It's like my annual day of depression. Funny thing is, every year I look forward to it -- I mean, I love Christmas but...

What exactly happened, farmboy? I mean, this Christmas.

This is what happens every Christmas morning. I don't really have a family -- I mean, I'm not married and I don't have kids so Christmas morning consists of sitting in a room with a family, like this year is my brother's family, and I sit and watch them all open a ton of gifts.

I need to stress here that this isn't about my brother and his family. It's about a day where I feel I don't belong, like the universe is showing me my real place in the world.

Which is?

Which is I'm alone and unwanted and unneeded. You know, if I was a little kid and believed in Santa Claus I'd think, well, I was a bad boy and I'm being punished for...for I don't know what.

I mean, I try to be a good person. I work with people with disabilities. I play music for children. I'm not perfect but I really do try to be nice and helpful and a decent human being. But every Christmas morning I get to find out how incredibly alone I am, how separate I am from everybody else.

And then I feel guilty 'cause I'm such a fuckin' selfish asshole and I need to suck everything up. I have to pretend it's all tinsel and peace on earth while inside a mental health storm is brewing.

What do you mean, farmboy? What's this about a "mental health storm?"

You know, I have problems crying, so there's no fuckin' relief from any of this. If I force myself, I can cry a little, but not much. So instead I want to do destructive things and I want to do them to myself. I want to be violent.

Violent?

I want to hit myself, hard in the head. I want to bang it against walls and I want to do lasting damage. And maybe I have. When I get like this sometimes I will punch myself in the head, on my skull, as hard as I possibly can. I have banged my head against walls. 

And then at some point I start thinking about suicide. I start thinking about how my life is completely hopeless and I might be saving myself a whole lot of pain by, you know, jumping off the cliff or taking a lot of poison or just slitting my wrists.

Of course, everyone is oblivious to all this happening, which is good. I don't want to ruin Christmas for anyone else. But inside I'm a fuckin' emotional mess who feels unloved and unwanted and I know it doesn't matter. I don't matter. The older I get the more I realize how inconsequential I really am, more than most people, really. I've spent most of my life creating songs that nobody will hear. I work at a job that is ruining whatever mental health I have, where I'm disrespected. I fuckin' hate my job, but I can't quit. I'm fuckin' stuck. My music is just ignored and, truthfully, I'm ignored unless somebody wants something out of me.

So here I am, miles away from home and marijuana and bad food and all the other things that I self-medicate with because my life is too fuckin' painful to experience like other people. I don't know what I did to deserve this. It's like, I'm a human being too and why can't I have Christmas like other people?

I'm sorry, man. I shouldn't be telling you all this. I should get off the phone...

No, farmboy, I want to know more.

I don't know what to say, man. There's not much left to say but merry Christmas to me, another Christmas of sadness and depression and forced tears. 

I'm sure I deserve this. I've only had miserable, depressing Christmases for the past twenty years or so.

I'm so sorry you feel like this, farmboy. I wish there was some way to help you feel better.

You gotta understand, man, I am fuckin' hopeless. I'm just a fuck-up with no living parents and a history of failure. I keep hoping, but that has to stop. No more hope. Hope is too fuckin' painful.

I'm worried about you, farmboy.

Well, don't. I'm not worth it. Over twenty years of bad Christmases...I need to learn my lesson, for once and for all. I don't fuckin' matter. I must be evil or something, I don't know. 

What I intend to do is take some of this anti-anxiety medication that my doctor gave to me. Might as well be doped up all day. You know, fuck me, that's all I can say.

I should have been drowned when I was born.