Did anyone else used to blog on Xanga way back in the early 2000s? With every blog post, you could add a “Currently Listening” box. You’d type in the name of the song and the article, and it would show the album art (because we all still bought CDs back then). And then you’d very deliberately select your song. Were you listening to something trendy? Or was it one of those “Oh, you’ve probably never heard of them” situation? For me, nearly everything was “you’ve probably never heard of them.” It wasn’t because I was honestly listening to a bunch of obscure indie bands; it was because I was so sheltered I hadn’t heard of half the bands.
But, sometimes, I’d like that feature back. It was an easy way to judge someone. Will your taste match mine? Does it mean we could be friends? Does it make me interesting? Mysterious? Stylish? What can we learn each other, right now? You’d learn a lot about a person flipping through their CD book in the passenger seat of their car.
My son is learning all about playlists and mix CDs. His father insisted on buying him a “vintage” CD player and giving him a small CD collection. It’s no record player or vinyl collection, but it’s the next best thing. The child has permanently corrupted my Spotify algorithm by building massive playlists out of Mega Man video game soundtracks. I can’t listen to any automated mix without being launched into a boss battle. It could be worse. It could be Baby Shark.
At least now he’s old enough to have his own opinions. “Mom, this song stinks. UGH it’s so weird! This sounds like KPop Demon Hunters–gross! UGH, MOM! Stop dancing! Next time you dance, I’m filming you on my tablet.”
You have no power here, child.
I’m nearly forty.
I’ve been living in embarrassment for decades.
And now we move into the holiday season, and I realize how much we’re still in survival mode, afraid or unable to simply embrace an average life. All three of us constantly wait for the shoe to drop. We hesitate to make plans and commitments. We’ve gone from casual to plan-averse. Why? Because we might have to cancel at the last minute, might have to spend the day in bed or in the hospital. Even as those events move further and further apart (I haven’t been in the ER since May 2025, I think).
Holidays just barely feel like holidays. I know part of “holiday magic” is forcing yourself to make it. You go to the town tree lighting. You bake cookies. You find local parades or events. You have to plan. You have to spend money (and there’s less and less of that as I search for more work and come up empty).
Christmas 2023, I was starting to get sick, but we didn’t realize it. I was an emotional wreck over my family estrangement. I was losing weight rapidly without any effort. My hair was thinning. I had a rash on my scalp that hurt and flaked no matter how much dandruff shampoo I tried. My hands were waking me up in the night, just aching. The lupus was taking hold, and we didn’t know.
Christmas 2024 I was fresh out of hospitalization for heart issues. I had a cardiac ablation and was in recovery. I think the day after Christmas, I was puking violently again, with pain in my left side. I thought I was dying. If I were conscious, I was vomiting or dry heaving until I was so, so empty, and then I kept on going. My heart was racing. And then we were back in the local ER until a doctor with the most dead, vacant eyes I had ever seen in a human. “Doctor, am I dying?” I wasn’t being dramatic. I had seriously given up hope of recovery and thought my body was giving up, tearing itself apart from the inside out.
“Well, we’re going to try to prevent that,” he said, as if he wasn’t sure it was worth the effort.
So my husband signed me out, packed me up, grabbed extra barf bags, and drove me four hours to Nashville to a legitimate hospital that felt safe, that had saved my life, that actually cared. And they drained two liters of fluid off my left lung–an extreme, lupus-raged reaction from the ablation. We found out in April that I had also developed temporary gastroparesis (again, a very rare ablation side effect since they’re working so close to the vagal nerve), which caused my extreme vomiting fits.
Now, Christmas 2025? I haven’t had a pleural effusion since February. I use my elliptical regularly. I take my son to an outdoor homeschool group. I can even hike (slowly, but I make it). Could we actually have a real Christmas? Could we rediscover actual holiday cheer?
Golly, I hope so.
It will just have to be cheap cheer until I get a better paycheck.
But that will happen.
You learn that, when you shouldn’t be alive, good things do happen. They just take time.
SJ Bocci Writes 