Thanksgiving

Holidays are hard and lonely, sometimes

Thanksgiving has always been a holiday of gluttony for me. My parents never noted its historic significance to my siblings and I when we were growing up, though my extra satisfied belly knew it was a special time. We celebrated in our own particular way—that is, with superior Vietnamese verve, flair, and dishes. We ate turkey and potatoes (roasted not mashed, of course), yes, but also sesame balls and egg rolls, bánh xèo and my dad’s infamous phở. This was normal for me growing up, the exceptional food and large parties my parents threw, the adults glazing over while my grandfather recited his annual prayer, the ten thousand kids screaming and running around everywhere like Chinese firecrackers. I didn’t—and probably couldn’t—appreciate all of this until I had moved across the country to live on my own.

Perhaps this is where I’ve derived my love of cooking from. I’m not the best chef (though others do like what I make, thankfully!), but I enjoy hosting and making people feel at home, especially when it involves serving them a warm meal. Sadly my Thanksgiving plans fell through this year, meaning that I will be dining alone. I had the opportunity to go to Philadelphia with my roommate (“You’re pretty much part of the family at this point”), but decided to stay in Vermont instead to gather myself after my back to back weekend trips to SF and DC. I’m glad I did, though the closed shops and empty parking lots, the lack of undergraduates prancing to and fro, the unerring wintery quiet of the birdsongless streets—all of it has me feeling a particular loneliness this year.

Loneliness is something I’m intimate with. It has colored a large number of my days as an adult, and I’ve really had to learn how to make space for it, how to befriend and utilize it in a generative fashion. Some say that it results from a lack of basic human recognition. That is, we feel lonely when our intrinsic humanity—that we exist and matter in the most broad sense—is left unacknowledged. I’ve certainly experienced this flavor of loneliness before, but what I currently feel is something more specific. Part of it has to do with the fact that I feel like I have no one to turn to in my immediate vicinity at the moment. Those who I normally lean on are either sick or traveling. I have group chats and friends online who I can talk with (which I have and am doing!), but it just isn’t the same as having a person physically near you.

Another thing is that I’m coming down from the connective high that characterized my recent weekend in DC. It simply felt amazing to spend a few days with a group of curious, emotionally attuned people under one rooftop. We hiked together. We sat in silence and cooked for each other. We walked and talked and walked and talked and walked and talked endlessly. There were certainly moments when I had to retreat to my room to catch a breath, but I knew that my friends were always on the other side of the door. It was exhausting in the best way possible.

One night we watched a movie (About Time) that brought up a lot of relationship grief for me. I cried in bed and didn’t sleep well that night, especially after also seeing on Instagram that my ex had been on a recent date (I know, I know, rookie mistake on my part for even looking—it was a premonition though, I honestly had a weird feeling that she had posted something, which was confirmed). In the morning, I talked about my pain with the woman who was hosting us, my friend who has lived many, many lifetimes. She listened and asked questions and shared relevant stories without offering any remedy to my grief, which was a huge source of relief and consolation. This encouraged me to open up more and more until there was nothing left but minor heartache and sleep deprivation. It’s rare that I get to do this, to share so openly and full of pain without feeling like a burden to someone who genuinely wanted to hold space. Waves of grief punctuated the rest of my day, but I felt that I could surf them more easily, in no small part thanks to the loving presence of my friends.

It’s hard, then, to come back from an experience like this. To a state that I love but have outgrown. It no longer feels like home. Visiting SF and DC has confirmed that my needs, desires, and ambitions have changed. I want to surround myself with more chaos and excitement than the green mountain state has to offer, as lovely and peaceful as it is. I want to be in a place with more people who match my vibe and interests, who can meet me where I’m at emotionally, intellectually, spiritually.

Related to these developments is the loneliness I feel. It’s the loneliness of an unsettled spirit. The spirit wants to be seen in all of its particular particularities, in all of its specific struggles, not as a static entity, not like the rest, but as a dynamic being subject to constant evolution. He wants to tell someone that he’s in one of the many minor key movements in the composition of his life—and that such musical dichotomies between major and minor keys, as suggested by his well-intentioned therapist, are in fact really dumb and unfaithful to life’s nuances, but are also in truth so relatable and so resonant. He wants someone to get it, to understand where he’s at and who he is in this period, not in a general sense, but in a fully embodied I’m staring into your eyes and I see mud, lots of it, and it’s pretty gnarly, but I’m here for it, for all the edges and razors that you will develop in carving out a path that is truly yours.

There will be no turkey this Thanksgiving. There will be no mashed potatoes. But dal soup is on the menu, as are brussel sprouts. And for that the spirit is grateful.