So I make costumes. Not your average fitted attire. I mean I do that too, but not just that. I make BIG costumes. Like with metal and shit. So about October-ish, I contacted a costume making studio that does work with a convention called “Dickens-fair”. Maybe You’ve heard of it. It is a Christmas fair that turns the whole center into a replica of Dickens’ London, complete with actors who represent his characters. I had always wanted to go and was just trying to think of ways to help out.
I contacted the head person for costumes for the actors and I told her I make period pieces and I specialize in weird stuff, but also in turning old thrift store items into period attire. She emailed me back and was like “Come meet me” and so I did. I came out to her studio and was sitting with her folks, showing her pictures of all the stuff I’d done I was proud of. Then she says…”Wait…I have an idea.”
She tells me that every year, Dickens-fair has this one performer who is a fiddling Christmas tree. Like What? yes. A tree…that fiddles. Apparently it’s like the fucking Mickey of Dickens-fair. Only, her outfit was made a few years back from fabric, and kind of looked like a dunce cap with streamers. She told me that this year, the Fiddling Tree wanted a new costume. She says “Can you make a Christmas tree that can fiddle?”
I’m like…no. “If she can fiddle and wear a tree, then I can build a tree that can be worn by a fiddler. Hell yeah.”
And she’s like…”It can’t touch her shoulders, and it has to fit over her normal costume, and it has to be period accurate, so all period ornaments.”
And I’m like…bitch, “I got this.”
She says “Come back in a week and meet her and give us your idea.”
So I designed…because I make costumes and I have Christmas in my blood. My mom always tells this story about how when I was like 4, I was with her at the train station in LA and I saw this man sitting on a bench. Now this man wore blue denim overalls, with a long sleeved red shirt, had a white beard, and carried a wooden cane carved with Rudolph, who had a gemstone nose…He was fucking Santa. Admit it. And 4 year old me was like……SANTA? My mom always says I stared at him hard and then tried to climb in his lap, like for real Tim Allen from Santa Clause style, but he was cool, and pulled me into his lap and had a whole conversation with me about whether or not I was being good…in July. According to my mom, he told her he was a professional Santa and this was something he always got from kids, and that he loved it. He then got picked up by a woman in a convertible and drove away.
My mom has been telling me this story since I was five.
So this year, about 3 years ago, I was like…A Christmas tree that fiddles…I got this.
I mean, I drew this shit. I went to hardware stores and craft shops and I priced out this shit. There were emails about what I could expect to be the substructure. I made a barbie doll scale model with pipe cleaners. I came in with a fucking Plan.
And they laughed and said… “We love the barbie…OK.”
So I had a budget. I had an idea. And I went with it. I made measurements and all sorts of stuff. Let me tell you about this costume…
This woman is 6′2″. She fiddles. She wears, beneath the tree, a full period costume. This means a bell hoop skirt and a corset. I made sure they had a hoop for her that was carved from fucking PVC pipe and a steel boned corset, and I went to work. I had frames…on fucking chains…from MY CEILING. I had the whole thing mapped out.
A lightweight metal skirt in a grid pattern made from chain, linked together in a mesh. gathered at the waist and clipped like a belt. Over the head, a cone-like structure carved out of mesh, mounted on braces that were lashed to the torso with straps bolted into the metal cross-braces. A light aluminum frame. And over this…a cape, made from long dangling chains. Every inch of chain was coated in weatherproofing green paint. Every few links…a limb hacked off a fake plastic Christmas tree. Woven amidst these? A series of handmade and donated ornaments, including fake cookies made from clay, fake candles with a remote control that controlled the flicker. I had paper ornaments, streamers, instruments made of brass, birds, candies made from plastic…I mean I had everything, and all to period. I worked and worked on this for months and had numerous fittings.
The aluminum headpiece came along. I was stressed. I didn’t know exactly how I was going to make this fucking cone mount on her chest so her shoulders would be free. I mean I had ideas - like a cone, but with a back and front piece that came down her torso and to which, straps were fixed that clipped at the sides. This would distribute weight evenly through the corset and allow for freedom of the shoulders. But! I didn’t have a firm plan. I went to the hardware store.
Me. Three months pregnant. All cute and glowy and shit.
And I walked into the section where all the plumbing and flashing is. Now I know my way around. I hate going here because I’m usually hassled by a dude who thinks girls can’t know shit about hardware. But this time…this time it was a nice old man with a snowy white beard, wearing a red shirt and a green apron. I’m like…he’s a Santa…this is fate.
He comes over and says “What can I help you with today?”
And so I tell him the whole story. About the tree, and the odd parameters, the physics, the complexities. I tell him what I’m trying to create, this cone of metal lashed to the chest, and he…
Smiles.
He tells me, “I’m a Santa. I do it every year. I love this project! I want to help!”
As we are brain storming, and he’s showing me all the products that might work, he mentions to me that he isn’t the first Santa in his family.
“My dad did it for most of his life.”
“Man, I have such respect for Santas. My mom always tells this story about me meeting this man who looked like a Santa at a train station and trying to sit on his knee.”
The man got very quiet. “At a train station?”
“Yeah, like he was wearing overalls and a red shirt and had this carved cane…”
“I remember that cane,” he says.
I turn to him… “The one with Rudolph?”
“With a ruby nose. Yeah. After he died I looked everywhere for it, but I couldn’t find it.”
I stopped. Like straight up stopped moving, with like my limbs all cold as snow. “Wait a minute? What? Are you telling me you know that Santa?”
“I think that was my dad. He is exactly as you say. He worked on the railroad as a conductor for most of his life, and when he retired they gave him free travel. He was always taking trips, and he always went as Santa, because after he retired, he did that full time.”
“Did your mom own a convertible? Like a sleek one?”
“Yup.”
I lost it. I’m in the middle of fucking Ace Hardware, talking to Santa, about my Santa, the one I can’t remember, but always knew existed, and that man is this Santa’s daddy. And here I am…shopping for parts to a fiddling Christmas tree. I cried like a little kid. He hugged me. I apologized and told him I was in my first trimester. He said it was fine. He gave me his card. Told me he was glad to hear his father had had such an impact on kids. He helped me pick out my tree pieces and then checked me out.
I built the best fucking tree you ever saw. I wove metal. I bent aluminum. I used riveters. I worked with saws, and vices, and paint, and glue, and fucking plastic clay. I did everything wearing gloves and a mask because of baby. I did it all like I had a fire under me, because fuck that…I’m not letting Santas down.
And this is what I made.
This was the dry fitting, the trial run. We fluffed it out with more limbs, added bits here and there, or planned for more. I strung this fucking thing from my rafters on a mannequin and we had a tree decorating party, putting ornaments on it like it was a real tree. Then we had her put on the whole thing, and we watched her play “O Tannenbaum”
And it was the best Christmas moment ever, for me.
That year, I had free tickets to Dickens-fair. I went and caught sight of my Christmas tree fiddling around, playing songs for kids and spreading the spirit. Then later I saw the fiddler dancing in Fezziwig’s ball, with her tree skirt still on over her dress. It was awesome, seeing this 7.5′ tall tree gliding around, this thing I made, with help from My Santa’s Son.
I was Santa that year. It made my holiday.
So the next time you meet a Santa… it might not be the real guy… but you needed to meet him. And if you are a Santa… this is what you do. This is your legacy.
Okay so there’s a Doctor Who book coming out based off an idea by Tom Baker (the fourth Doctor) and the late Ian Marter (Harry Sullivan) from back when they were starring in the show.
It features Tom Baker’s Doctor with Sarah and Harry, it’s written by Tom Baker and the audiobook is read by Tom Baker!
Sometimes I think if I could start over completely - if I could remove every responsibility I have, every obligation, every relationship, hobby, every thing - and just slowly choose and add items to my life as I was able to handle them and as I wanted them, what ones would I still have
Just begged to use a vacation day because I’m out of sick days but my brain doesn’t care
My brain says stay here with your happy light and your humidifier and never leave your bed again and recover from existing in December
I’m either not going or I’m going to be hella late because I need to leave the house in 4 minutes to be there on time and I am in bed and firmly wearing no pants
When I was at the lowest spot in my depression I locked myself in my bedroom for three days and lied to everyone I knew. I called in sick to work. I told my mom I was seeing a doctor. I told my friends I was busy. I had successfully fooled everyone who loved me that I was making healthy changes and getting better. I wasn’t, but it was so much easier to hide and pretend that I was than to actually go outside and do something.
Depression is weird. I feel like a lot of people think depression means being sad and crying all the time but it’s the exact opposite. Depression, for me at least, was the complete and utter lack of emotion. I was so apathetic to everything that I couldn’t care if I wanted to. Sometimes I would work myself up to tears by thinking about how fucking miserable and pathetic I was, but almost as quickly as they came I was back to “what’s the point?”
Same with happiness. I could watch the cutest cat video on the whole internet and I would smile and laugh and the alarm in my brain would start screaming KITTEN ALERT EVERYBODY FREAK OUT
but as soon as it was over the power would go out and the little workers inside my head would take a vacation to the brain of someone who could sustain an emotion for longer than the average youtube video.
So there I am, laying in bed, my entire body recoiling in horror at the pitiful excuse of the mind that it’s been permanently tethered to. I start to wonder if things will ever change or if I’ll just be like this forever. I become vaguely suicidal. I don’t really want to end my life, but I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea of me suddenly ceasing to exist. So I hide in bed all day, every day, for as long as I can manage.
I wait for something. Anything. A satellite to fall through my roof and crush me in my sleep. An earthquake to part my street from the avenue that crosses it and swallow my house to the middle of Earth’s giant rumbly belly. A friend to kick down my door and drag me to the hospital or mental institution or maybe a secret underground lab where the government keeps people who don’t have feelings anymore.
Fortunately, none of that happens.
My friends eventually catch on to my shenanigans and despite their best efforts, are useless. They would try to get me out of the house almost daily but I would make up some bullshit excuse to get out of it.
Eventually, they stop trying to help me, and even though they weren’t successful before, their lack of empathy becomes my new favorite excuse.
It wasn’t their fault, of course. It was mine. They had done everything they could and I was not ready or able or willing to cooperate. Did I understand that at the time? No fucking way. Why I would take responsibility for my problems when I could just blame them on someone else?
In the early stages of my depression I would sometimes compare my affliction to The World’s Worst Roller Coaster!™
I knew that eventually I would get to the top, the ride being so emotionally exhausting that I would simply be ‘okay’ enough to not throw myself over the railing and ruin some random passerby’s day. I would instead begin the long and weary trek down the 312 steps towards sanity.
But I never reached the top.
In fact, my ascent to the peak of the coaster was so slow that renovations had already begun and construction on the rest of the track had started while I was still onboard. Nobody cared to notify me or maybe slam the big red button that says “HEY THERE’S SOME ASSHOLE STILL ON THE RIDE!”
As my depression continued, The World’s Worst Roller Coaster!™ slowly began to morph into an episode of The World’s Deadliest Train Crashes!®.
My train car began to pick up speed along the newly appointed rails. I passed through tunnels and forests and cold mountain ranges but no cities or towns or warm inviting parties filled with people I wanted to see or be around. My train was on a journey to God knows where, but it was going too fast for me to hop off or for anyone to hop on and help me.
I tried to make the best of my train ride by keeping myself busy (in my own solitary one-person train car, of course) but it only made me more lonely and depressed. No matter how many video games, books, movies, or internet memes I devoured I still couldn’t feel like I was doing anything right.
Eventually I realized my train wasn’t taking me anywhere good.
I knew I still had plenty of time before I needed to start worrying, but it was hard for me to accept the fact that the light at the end of my tunnel was actually a fallen-apart rickety wooden bridge over a 200 foot drop into freezing polar bear infested waters. I figured I would just hold on as tight as I could and pray I would survive the fiery plunge off the bridge and that maybe, just maybe, someone would pull my shivering body out of the ice-water.
You see, I had no desire to change anything. I was ready to ride my stupid train right to my death. I just didn’t care enough to save myself.
While riding my train, I spoke to a friend. She told me that I was running out of track and that she was afraid. She began to cry and told me that she wanted nothing more than for me to get off the train. She wanted me to fix my stupid brain and convince the little workers to ditch their vacation plans and come back home. She wanted me to watch cat videos that would make me laugh so hard my eyes would roll back into my head and my spine would constrict into the letter R. She wanted me to get back to blogging the way I had in the past and use it to build a name, and possibly a career, for myself. She wanted me to find love in someone who loved me back, rather than the useless people I had spent the last year chasing to no avail. She wanted the best for me. She wanted me to be good. She offered to do anything she could to make me that way.
This person had so much love for me that she was willing to do anything to help me.
I snapped.
I realized I wasn’t ready to let go.
I began to cry. I began to cry in a way that I hadn’t cried in months. I felt genuine emotion and I wanted to keep feeling it. I used to hate crying, but after weeks and months of indifference and pure concentrated lethargy, the tears felt like the best thing ever. Each salty glob was a sigh of relief. All the emotions I had repressed were leaking down my face and I didn’t know if I should smile or laugh or sob loudly. So I did all three.
I stood up in my train car and leaned over the side. I could see the bridge out at the end and I knew it was now or never. I closed my eyes and jumped feet first.
I did it! I got off the train! I didn’t explode into tiny little pieces and get devoured by polar bears! I ran back to my friend and I thanked her for saving me.
“I didn’t do anything, Rhyse. You made the decision. You got off the train.”
I was aware that I wasn’t right the whole time, but I was perfectly content to just ride it out, even though I knew it wasn’t going to end well. I had spent so long not feeling anything that I believed the first active choice I had made was all due to someone else. But it was me all along. I had made the first step to getting better.
Now I have a long walk back to civilization. My path won’t be easy. It will be a slow and arduous journey peppered with therapists, medication, and return-to-work forms, but I am ready to try, and that’s already an enormous development from the way I’ve been.
I know it’s probably weird to be reading this on my blog, especially considering this is about as much an actual ‘blog’ as cheese slices are actual cheese, but I felt it was extremely important to share my story with people who might be going through the same thing.
I am not cured of my depression and I won’t pretend that I’m perfectly okay now, but I am ready to start getting better. Knowing you’re not alone is huge. Depression weakens people by isolating them from the ones they love. Know this, if you are feeling like I felt, you are not alone. Reach out to the people who surround you, you never know who will be there to catch you.
Promise me that youll do something today. I love you.
I am an image transcribing bot which uses Tesseract OCR to translate images to text. I’m far from perfect but I try my best! Future is exactly like a box of chocolates.. And not in a good way. | PayPal | Patreon
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