The Devastation of the Traditional Christmas Song.

Today I sat down at my computer to try and program a game that I have decided to build without any knowledge of programming. When I work, I like to listen to music, it helps my ADHD brain focus. I wasn't sure what I wanted to Fatal error!

Unhandled Exception: EXCEPTION_ACCESS_VIOLATION reading address

Sorry, that was a strange and unintended thing, but I've left it in because it fits so well with what had happened to me a few minutes ago.

Now, I wasn't sure what I wanted to listen to today. I didn't want to listen to metal or emo, I didn't want to listen to 90s or dance, so I began to scroll through my suggestions. If anyone who is reading this has ADHD, you know that you can't really do things like eat or work before you find that perfect background noise to engage your brain. So, naturally, I scrolled.

It's autumn here, almost December, and I watch a lot of nostalgic things on my YouTube, so the algorithm popped up with a peculiar playlist: Merry Christmas playlist ~ The very best traditional Christmas old songs of all time.

DO NOT CLICK ON THIS!

I guess I should rephrase.

If you are like me and grew up in a place where "Traditional Belief Systems" reign supreme and you went to elderly relative's places for most of the Christmas Holiday. If your family enjoyed having Christmas get-togethers with little salty sweet hors d’oeuvres and a table spread that would have made King Henry VIII jealous.

If you are a person who went to these gatherings regularly, and your Grandmother's pie was so good that it sometimes triggered a Christmas Eve free-for-all in the blizzard which generally was roaring out the frost-covered window, blanketting darkened farms and back roads around you for who gets the last piece of the just-tart-enough strawberry rhubarb pie.

If you remember sitting in front of fireplaces, smelling the soft perfume of evergreen which mixed playfully with perfumed Aunts and the warmth of family chatter around you, you will immediately break down and weep like a little child on Christmas Day when you see the mountain of presents climbing your tree.

I clicked on this horrible nostalgic nightmare because I felt like I wanted a little Christmas cheer today while I worked away at this thing. It was a terrible, horrific mistake.

Oh, I was fine for the first song. I was like, oh my, this is lovely, but as it went, as I listened to this heart-tearing masterpiece of classics, I slowly began to realize the mistake I had made as it slowly chipped away at the dam I'd built around my heart and soul to protect my adult self from the trauma I've been scarred with throughout my life, all of which I refuse to deal with appropriately because I'm a stubborn millennial that is just trying to survive the next world-shattering crisis and is afraid that digging up that burial ground of trauma with break me...

Little by little the tinny, vintagey hollow-sounding voices singing about angels, silent nights, and Jesus dragged me clawing and kicking back through the years into some beautifully bloody pit of hellish happiness and fond memory that I won't ever be able to live again.

The choirs of men and women singing on key about God, sleighs, and stars slowly buried me in a grave of sorrowful capitalist dystopian reproach, that of which I had to claw my way back out of before it strangled my lungs with emotionality and feeling, both of which I have avoided because in this bleak, spiralling, world we live in is too much for my ADHD brain to handle.

As the songs went on and my childhood memories played in front of my eyes, freezing me in some wretched time crisis, I burst into sobs and tears, wailing like some sort of animal. My lovely wife, who was working out in the other room, ran to me and said:

"Nick! Oh my God! What's wrong!" she panicked and crossed from one side of the house to the other in 2 seconds flat, grabbing me.

I continued to laugh-cry, struggling to explain why I was falling apart to Christmas songs. I guess I hadn’t really known myself until I popped this open and decided to write an article about my pain. Probably as a form of self-consolement, more than anything else, to be honest.

How's your morning going? Listen, we’ll be alright.