Christmas paper

This weekend has been a weekend of firsts.

It`s the first time I`ve ever been to Kyoto; the first time I`ve ever seen the Golden Temple: the first time I`ve ever seen a real Geisha (but not the first time I`ve forgotten my camera at the exact moment I need it most). This weekend was the first time I`ve ever helped to make mochi; the first time I`ve ever witnessed the incredible politeness and accurateness of a Japanese internal flight (in approximately twelve minutes we will be experiencing turbulance, and we are very sorry for this); the first time I`ve fallen asleep next to a shrine (it was at the top of a really big mountain). It was the first time I`ve ever started doing a little embroidery in the middle of a pizza restaurant - and the first time I`ve really realised how weird I can sometimes be - and the first time I`ve ever ordered a two pint glass of beer by myself and gotten drunk with nobody to make it socially acceptable. It was the first time I have ever had a long Japanese conversation with a stranger, and the first time that when a stranger congratulated me on my language skills, I felt I deserved it. It was the first holiday I`ve ever been on and not lost my camera, and the first winter weekend where I haven`t bought and lost a pair of gloves. This time I only lost one.

It was also the first Christmas I have ever spent on my own.

I thought it would be okay. In fact, I thought it would be great. I would take my savings - most of them, thanks to the expense of Japan and the goddamn neverending purchase of gloves - and fly to Kyoto: luxuriate in my freedom, read books, drink coffee, wander around temples, and pretend that I was Scarlett Johanson in Lost in Translation, because my hair now looks just like hers did then. I`d be at one with Buddhism and Shintoism and go shopping and buy pretty things and listen to my iPod and connect with various Gods because, after all, it was just another day, wasn`t it? Just a day after the 24th of December, before the 26th, at the end of 2010, and I wasn`t even Christian. I was whatever I felt like that day, and everything else was nostalgia and the trickery of irrational emotions. My heart making no sense at all against the logic of a brain that told me that Christmas didn`t matter because it was a day like every other.

It did matter. If I`ve been quiet for the last two weeks, it`s because my heart and my head have been at war again; because every time I sat down to write this blog all I could write was I don`t want to be alone at Christmas. Five drafted blog entries that start with I don`t want to be alone at Christmas. And because I knew that I couldn`t start every blog for two weeks with I don`t want to be alone at Christmas, and because that was all my heart was saying, and because my brain couldn`t talk loudly enough to cover it up, I wrote nothing. And I tried to think nothing. I got on the plane, thinking as little as I could, and I fought with myself for the whole weekend.

Look at that lovely temple, I told myself fiercely; isn`t it beautiful? Isn`t it a once in a lifetime experience?
It`s Christmas. I want to go home.
Don`t be silly. Look at the red leaves on that tree - take a picture to bore other people with for years to come.
I don`t care about leaves. I want to go home.
Come on. You are lucky to be here. So many would kill for this.
I`m lonely.
You`re not; you`re independent.
I`m sick of being independent. I`m lonely. I miss my family. I miss my ex boyfriend. I miss being loved. I miss loving. I miss love. I don`t want to be on my own anymore.

And everywhere was full of love. Everywhere I looked was bursting at the seams with it. Couples, touching hands on the edges of lakes; little kisses, little presents, little hairs moved away from eyes. Tiny children squealing because their father was pretending to drop them, the way I squealed when my father pretended to drop me. Conversations that only two people understood: looks that only two people could see. And I didn`t feel reassured by it, or wrapped in it; I felt outside of it; as if every single touch, and look, and word, was building a fence around something I couldn`t be part of. And it didn`t matter how much mochi I made, or how many Geishas I saw, or how many temples I walked around at fell asleep next to: it wasn`t Christmas for me. It couldn`t be, when I was all I had.

I walked through too many Christmases this weekend. There was no Kyoto, no matter what the roadsigns said. I walked through the Christmases of when I was tiny and lay awake, heart pounding because I was scared of Santa, and the Christmases where we all clambered into bed together - my sister, my mum, my dad and me - and the Christmases where we`d go through each present one by one, and open them at the same time. I went through the Christmases where we all got drunk together - all 14 of my family - and the Christmas last year where I took the boy I loved on his first ever rollercoaster because I didn`t want him to be scared of them anymore, and he didn`t take me anywhere to help me not be scared of my love for him anymore. I walked through all of the Christmases and all of the love, and they lay behind me like a long path I wanted to be on, and Kyoto wasn`t there. It was just me, alone with the past and the love I wanted.

Still want.

There are little bits of paper all over Kyoto; little bits of paper in stars and hearts and circles, tied to things and stuck to things and written all over. And they are wishes. Thousands and thousands of wishes and dreams, stuck to the fences and tied to the trees of Kyoto. And some of them are now mine.

And this was what I wrote on Christmas day: I don`t want to be alone anymore.  A dozen pieces of paper in Japan, all saying what I was too scared to write here. I don`t want to be alone. Not at Christmas, and not at all. I want somebody to brush the hair away from my face; I want to wake up to see the face of somebody who wakes up to see the face of me. I want to pick up a child and make them squeal because they love me; I want to feel that squeal as mine. I want those gestures: the fingers touching, the jokes I understand. I want somebody to love me enough to take me on a rollercoaster because they know I`m scared. I want my family.

I won`t be spending Christmas alone again; wherever I am in the world, I`ll go home. I don`t want loneliness. Because it`s not independence, no matter how many times I chant it in my head; it`s just shutting yourself outside the gates of other people`s love, because you`re too scared to ask to come in. Because it`s a rollercoaster you`re scared to get on, and there`s nobody who cares enough to help you. Nobody to hold your hand when you`re frightened of getting close to anyone. Nobody to hold your hand to keep you there when you do.

This weekend was a weekend of firsts, in many ways. And as great as it was, I hope that it was also a weekend of lasts. That next Christmas, it`s different.

And with every piece of paper I have, I am making the wish that this will be the very last year I have to end on my own.