reality check

Lets play 'what if...' What if you loved cookies, really loved them, everything about them. the process of making them, sometimes even making memories with a good friend or two, and eating the dough by the spoonfuls risking the chance of getting salmonella, and inhaling the wonderful scent that spreads thru the whole house while they bake. and of course eating the finished product while they're fresh out of the oven and still warm and falling apart and leaving trails of melted chocolate chips on your lips...and then saving some for the freezer so you could anticipate the yumminess that is frozen chocolate chip cookies. now, what if your favorite person on this planet, the one you love the very most decided one day to reveal to you that cookies weren't really his thing, that he'd merely been putting up with them for years because it made other people happy, and in fact it made him annoyed and sick to his stomach to even smell them, let alone eat them... and all things relating to cookie baking would be gotten rid of if he could have his way. now, what if instead of cookies, that thing was christmas, and it was a true story, not just a silly made up joke? no strings of pretty blue lights, or snowman candles or garlands to wrap around railings or wreaths on your door that make your house smell like a christmas tree farm... and no jolly tunes to fill a room with christmas spirit. sure he said i could do it all, like every other year before, but with the new knowledge of how unhappy it makes him feel, how could i do that, and enjoy that, and feel the 'magic' of christmas with the one i love. both our reactions to all this have surprised us both i think. his newfound coldness and true dislike of this holiday dating back to as far back as he can remember, even citing a paper he wrote in 3rd grade about his negative feelings toward christmas. and my reaction has been the extreme opposite, realizing how much i truly love this time of year, and all the silliness that comes with it in the form of pretty lights and snowmen and certain songs you can only play during like 1-month out of the year. i'm really just feeling like someone punched me in the stomach. i cried for hours about it last night. i think it's feeling so rawly painful because i feel so powerless; i can't change my favorite person's feelings, i can only change my own...which means living without christmas. sometimes its cool to have such opposite personalities and have someone to give you a different perspective on things. but sometimes it just hurts.