Christmas in Grief and on Prozac

And other ~Jewish~ things.

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These days, I’m only certain about one thing: all intense writers who take antidepressants love the holidays.

I’m no exception.

The twinkling fairy lights. The elementary POPS of primary color.

The collective denial of how catastrophic the world *actually* is. The tinsel. The adorned trees. The spinning dreidels. The wrapping paper. The ribbon. The whole “razzle-dazzle” of the season floods our medicated brains with even more serotonin— we’re practically rolling this time of year.

The first time I felt an antidepressant begin to work was a very vivid experience. I always revisit the memory this time of year because the Holidays invoke a similar sensation in me.

This was over ten years ago.

I was living in London.

Freshly traumatized and figuring out the world teemed with gory nighttime predators—that’s a rough time for all girls. Toss innate hyper-sensitivity and god-given flair for the forlorn into the mix and you’ve got yourself an aspiring actress on the brink.

I was two weeks into Prozac, and as far as I could tell, my brain soup was just as soggy. Until one drizzly day, I stepped off the train and onto Oxford Street.

Everything looked different. Palpably different. The sky was laden in its usual dreary mist, but no longer appeared bleak.

There was an underlying brightness that you couldn’t really see but could feel.

It was like the inner glow possessed by the *truly* good. Different than the dewy skin of a pricey chemical peel—it’s a skin-deep radiance that money can’t buy. You have to think authentically cheerful thoughts if you want to be lit from within, like that.

Yes, that’s exactly it. It was as if London was thinking cheerful thoughts that rainy March day.

And if you’ve been to London, you know that London hates cheeriness.

London loves misery.

London is aroused by how dismal this life is.

London furiously masturbates to the idea that life’s bloody difficult, for fuck’s sake.

To be chic in London is to be droll and aloof.

London refuses the headache medicine, she likes to suffer.

So drink your lukewarm tea, eat your stale crumpets, and get on with it, darling.

But I promise the city was vibrating with joy that day.

And so was I. It was like American Holiday joviality had suddenly hijacked my brain. It feels like Christmas, I thought. In my mind. I skipped like Santa’s little helper into the job I hated. I wondered if a big cosmic shift had taken place.

And then it dawned on me. The doctor had said it would take about two weeks for the happy pills to start working. The drugs were fucking working. Praise modern fucking medicine.

The following winter, I experienced my first Holiday season medicated. Between the manufactured serotonin thanks to big Pharma and the manufactured dopamine flood of the Christmas Industrial Complex—I was bouncing off the walls, I felt so good.

A decade deep in the Prozac, I now understand it wasn’t the antidepressants rendering me high, they aren’t narcotics, we all know that. It’s just that I’d just been so sad for so long, I’d never really noticed how magical the world feels when glittering and silver; lit up and Brat green.

I’d phoned in the Christmas Spirit for years because when you’re sad like I was it takes up a lot of space in your brain. But now I was free from the looping thoughts of pending doom, which allowed me to get lost in the glimmer shimmer for the first time in what felt like forever. When you go from dead inside to present and are able to finally absorb beautiful things, it feels as intoxicating as drugs.

Eventually, I adjusted to life without the proverbial curtains drawn, and light didn’t feel like such a rare treat anymore. I adjusted to having a baseline that wasn’t irrevocably sad.

But when the holidays roll around every year, the buzz comes back.

Maybe it’s because I’ve medicated my depression but not my ADHD so much, so I’m lit up by the stimulus of incessant shininess. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer. And the holidays are the one time of year we long-form essayists aren’t expected to write about warfare and rape. We get to publish breezy gift guides and dumb/fun quizzes like “What Holiday Cocktail Are You?”

It’s true what they say. The more you lean into dumbness, the happier you are. If depression strikes deadly again, I’m going do as the blue bloods do: request a lobotomy, Kennedy family style.

But this year no amount of Prozac and no amount of sparkle is giving me a surplus of feel-good chemicals. It’s my first holiday season without my favorite person—my big brother Blake. He lost a gruesome battle with Pancreatic Cancer a little over two months ago. I took care of him in hospice and saw some shit I’ll never unsee, even if I *do* schedule that lobotomy.

We were so alike, my brother and I.

Yes, he preferred Zoloft to Prozac, but they’re the same class of antidepressant, SSRI (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).

We both were working creatives of the neurodivergent ilk. We both carried the kind of bleeding hearts that beget both paralyzing bouts of unshakeable sadness and enviable artistic gifts.

The two of us lived in extremes—always oscillating between states of extreme hyper-focus and scattered; perfectionist and oh fuck it; docile and contrarian; the death of the party and the life of the party.

Believe it or not, Blake was more intense than yours truly, and I’m a lesbian, so that’s saying a lot. And damn, we loved holidays more than other over-therapied New York Jews to ever exist.

We both love to work, but we took time off in December, guiltlessly. We’d fly to our parent’s house in Florida, arriving with baggage exploding with dirty laundry, excited and ready to terrorize the family with our wildly offensive jokes and loud, booming voices.

I didn’t want to do Thanksgiving this year.

Neither did my sister, Jaymie.

We’re both the antithesis of a shrinking violet, but Blake took up the most space at Thanksgiving—he was a typical man like that. He’d slam back vodka doubles and talk over everyone, which would be obnoxious if he wasn’t so charming and funny. He’d heckle the guests at Thanksgiving dinner and laugh so violently the walls would shake. He’d show up big and hairy; flamboyant and hysterically funny; passionate and ready to argue.

It’s not like we’re missing something subtle, this year, we’re missing something glaring. Something massive. An Avante Guard piece of art so specific—it changes the temperature of an entire room.

Jaymie and I both started the day crying and neither of us had it in us to dress festively chic, like usual, donning our usual holiday uniform of cocktail dresses and a bold lip. She wore black jeans, I wore a black leather mini and a leotard more beige than my mood.

Usually, I make a speech at dinner in which I troll the whole family, but this year I just stood up and wept. I drank six glasses of wine and didn’t even feel boisterous, artificially.

Normally, I go out and party with Blake at the bars after Thanksgiving dinner—but this year that was the last thing I wanted to do.

Instead, I smoked a joint with Ruba and Theresa.

Ruba is my best friend (more of a sister than anything) and Theresa has worked for my family for almost twenty years. She’s a badass country bitch who lives on a farm with a million rescue horses and pigs and pulls up to the house blasting hillbilly music in her Mustang, sucking back cigs. “Blake was the damn best guy there ever was,” she drawled in her deep southern accent that night. I don’t smoke often, so I got high as a kite and fell asleep in my beige leotard and black tights, over the sheets of my bed, phone in hand.

I woke up groggy and uncomfortable, checked my outgoing call log. Much to my horror, I’d talked to my girlfriend for fifty-five minutes. It felt akin to looking at a sun faded photograph—there was evidence that it happened, but I couldn’t make out the details.

“What did we talk about?” I asked her.

“You don’t remember?” She sounded bewildered. “We had a deep conversation. I told you I finished reading your memoir, we processed it for almost an hour.”

Fuck, was all I could think. All I’ve ever wanted, you see, is for someone to love me enough to not just read my book—but process it with me. And here I am, I finally have it, yet I was too high to remember it.

But then I remembered that I just lost the closest person in the world to me and it’s the first holiday of my life without him and I feel like there are human sized bullet holes in my heart—holes that will never be filled again, no matter how hard I try—and I’m learning for the first time that one day I’ll have to get used to living with holes even though it’s excruciating. Walking around perforated during the holidays is going to be hard and that’s okay. And won’t be graceful. Grief never is. Healing never is. The most catalytic moments of our life are the ones that stretch us into more evolved versions of ourselves but the process of evolution comes with immense growing pains.

And even though I’m not on the same holiday high this year, it’s still prettier, aesthetically, during Christmas time, isn’t it?

I mean grief always has this eery way of sucking the color out of everything—but I’d rather be colorless with pretty Christmas decor than colorless without it, I think.

At least that’s how I feel at this moment.

That could change. Edit: that will change.

Grief is the most manic emotion of all—one moment, you’re on a shopping spree feeling grandiose and richer than god the next, you can’t get out of bed. One moment, you’re buying an island the next, you want to die. And if I’ve learned one thing this year it’s this: there is no bypassing grief. It’s like trying to out-swim a tsunami. You’re at the will of the most tempestuous beast of all, Mother Nature. You’ve got no choice but to let the riptides drag you wherever the fuck they want to drag you. Let the ocean spit you out on whatever beach she damn chooses. Let the waves fluctuate between swallowing you whole and carrying you in her gorgeous swell.

And there have been some precious moments of connection in this weird season of holiday grief. I walked through the streets of New York alone for hours and just let myself be held by the chaos of my city.

I performed a new piece in Brooklyn in a reading called The Tortured Blogger’s Department (spearheaded by the amazing substacker and writer Cara). Dayna read something new too—it was our first show together in years, and even though I had a hole in my chest, and Dayna did too because she loved Blake—we both still ~crushed~ and I was reminded of how nothing, not even death and grief can rob me of my innate desire to create.

I went to a gala with Eduardo and wore a Dolce & Gabanna knock-off dress from Dolls Kill, and it actually looked decent.

Even though we gorged on free food and drink, we still went out for truffled mac and cheese afterward—we’ll always have truffled mac and cheese, even when we’re broke, Ed and I have always figured out how to live the truffle lifestyle and that feels comforting right now.

Gabi and my dad and I went to see BEAUTIFUL: A CAROLE KING musical last night at the ASOLO Theatre in Sarasota, where I’m staying for the whole holiday season. Musicals always make me think of Blake, the biggest, fiercest theatre nerd of all, so yes I thought of him the whole time, which made me really sad but also cloaked me in a cozy warmth that can only be described as his presence.

I even had a visitation dream about him a few weeks ago and it wasn’t sad or morbid—we talked about death, he promised to always come back, he looked amazing, and even cracked jokes about not being able to smoke joints whilst dead, typical Blake.

I woke up and sobbed to Gabi but for the next forty-eight hours I had the same cloak of warmth on my shoulders, which made me feel connected to him in a way that was both extraordinary and gut-punching.

I guess that’s what this year has been. Extraordinary and gut-punching.

I guess all I can do is hold both the awe and the hurt; the heaviness and the gorgeous twinkling lights; the anger and the vacancy; the prettiness of the season and the hollowness of grief.

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