My least favorite thing about the holidays is the leaving. I enjoy the family rivalries, the inevitable clashes of different threads of family and friends. I'm indifferent to the added stresses of holiday crowds in airports and on the freeways, but saying goodbye over and over again is hard. We can live farther away from the people we love and stay in touch with the various digital wonderments of fiber-optics and satellites orbiting overhead, but there is no replacement for sharing the same space. That's the inevitable conclusion I arrive at every year during the holidays. Arriving home, dropping the ungainly weight of my bags, opening the windows to freshen the stifled air of my dormant apartment, looking out on the streets below, familiar but filled with strangers flowing past in their indifferent rushes, I feel small and alone.
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