Final View

It's December.
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I don't feel anything for the month anymore. Not for myself, anyway. I'm not some sort of misanthrope that hates Christmas, seething at the very sight of a holly wreath or mistletoe. I'm no Scrooge, no. The concept of Christmas has been wonderful to me since I was a boy, sharing seasonal joy with my youthful friends and showing them the cherished gifts I'd been given. I enjoyed Christmas then, and many memories still exist in my head of many a twenty-fifth spent at my now late relatives' houses, cousins rarely seen coming over to celebrate and hopefully give me gifts too.
So why do I express nothing towards the very holiday I know I have loved?
Because I no longer can love it. It's not that I choose not to; I physically cannot, and I cannot because my condition does not allow me to.
The beginning of what I'm talking about began on my seventeenth birthday. My birthday falls on the thirtieth of November, and as such, it became a theme that my relatives liked to get me all sorts of advent calendars among my other gifts, as a sort of running in joke that I admittedly did find funny for a time.
I got all kinds of calendars to signify the countdown to Christmas Day. Cheap, store bought ones, novelty ones, kids-themed ones, even some adult-themed ones a few times. Occasionally, though, I'd get the more expensive ones; ones that were made from certain types of material, that displayed pictures rather than having candy within them.
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It was on my seventeenth birthday that I got one of these.
We were sat in our lounge in my mother and father's modest house, everyone gathered to see me open my gifts. Up until I got to my Aunt's carefully wrapped gift, I'd had a whale of a time opening everything. The moment I'd laid my eyes upon it, I had sensed something was wrong with it. It was a gut premonition, and I was absolutely right.
But in a public setting where a dozen people are watching you expecting you to enjoy something, you can't really say that you suddenly dislike something because of a gut feeling. That'd be rude.
And so, I had looked over the advent calendar in my hands, pretending to drink in what I'd been given in awe. It was an ornate thing, carved from mahogany, and the illustrations on the doors were hand-painted in a way that reminded me of the artwork on Russian dolls. The edges were gilded with swirling gold designs, and each numbered tile was painted to look like a heavyset brown planked door with a frosted window, where a painted shadow was displayed to give the illusion of a person standing behind it.
For some reason, I could feel them looking at me.
The numbers themselves were painted in the center of each door in red and white alternating colors, reminiscent of a candy cane. I didn't know what I know now, but I knew that holding that calendar in my hands did not feel right.
"Well, do you like it Alec?" My Aunt had asked.
I had done my best to give a positive answer despite the creeping sense of unease that I could not shake off.
"Yeah, thank you aunt Greta, I've never owned a calendar like this one before."
I wasn't lying; I hadn't.
After the pleasantries had ended and everyone had left, I retreated to my room, with plans to look over this calendar one last time, and then get rid of it. Being seventeen now, my family wouldn't pry too much and question why they couldn't see it displayed in my room anymore after I had disposed of it. They respected my privacy.
My hands reached for it, and honestly, I still remember its beauty. Despite the discomfort I felt, I admired the craftsmanship and artwork. Wherever she'd got it from, my aunt had probably paid way less for it than something like this was worth.
I peered at the hand-carved wooden details, flipping it over and examining the back. Written upon it in etched letters was:
"Patience is a virtue"
Now I had never cared about these gimmicky teachings that calendars of the religious variety liked to peddle; but something felt different. This calendar had already made me feel uncomfortable, so I did take a little more notice of this particular message than I usually would; stopping to think about what that could be referring to.
Not long enough to understand what it actually meant, though.
The following day, I took my calendar to a thrift store that was local to my hometown; hopefully I'd be able to get a few bucks for it.
The store clerk took it in my hands with a lack of any of the unease that I'd had when touching it. This threw me off a little.
"Where did you get this, son?" He'd said to me with a look of wonder on his face. His hands traced themselves over the doors, going to open the first one to inspect it. I couldn't understand why he didn't feel the same apprehension I had felt about holding that thing.
Door number one swung open on its' hinges, revealing an illustration of a reindeer in a snowy woodland environment. It was painted in the same kind of style as the rest of the calendar, wavy ridges making up its' brown fur and antlers. I noticed that this illustration's beady black eyes seemed to follow me wherever I looked at it; trained on me intently, almost alive.
I swiftly averted my gaze.
"It's lovely, just wonderful!" The cashier had said as he handed me ten dollars. I hadn't really cared what the hell was up with that calendar. I just wanted it far away from me, and so, if that man liked what he saw, then that wasn't my problem once he'd bought it.
I thought I hadn't cared, that is.
You see, I can't prove exactly what caused my condition. But I have my suspicions, and it's not farfetched to come to the conclusions I have.
It developed that Christmas. It began as a general feeling of emptiness. I felt plain and indifferent. Walking and talking with friends and family became slowly less and less meaningful as December crept onwards. I gradually felt odder and odder emotions, like I was being pulled every which way in the middle of a conversation.
It began to wreck my winter life, starting to ruin it in every way possible.
To start with, my job life became strained; complaints became a problem as customers began to complain to my manager about my supposed lack of motivation and monotonous conversation. I simply looked as if I didn't want to be there. I had no idea why I had begun to feel this way; I liked my retail job, it paid my bills and my co-workers were nice enough.
My love life also began to decline come December. Every relationship I'd had ended before the year was out; all it would take was one seed of doubt, and I'd subsequently ruin all I'd had with the women in my life.
It was utterly hopeless; I felt physically exhausted.
And it's still happening.
Today is the fifth of December, and I'm already seeing the effects. I'm twenty six now, to put that into perspective. The only difference between now and when it first began is that I know what it is.
I've become a mirror-man.
It's what I call it to make sense of it.
I live my life as a blank slate now, feeling muted and indifferent without interaction; no real feelings or traits of my own. But when I pass by someone in the street, even if they consider me for a moment, I begin to feel an array of things. I've noticed a pattern. Whatever they think when they speak to me, even their thoughts, become my emotions and actions. I am literally shaped by everyone else now. I can't even cry about it, because sadness is no longer something I can comprehend anymore without someone telling me that they think I look sad, or perhaps thinking that I may be upset about something.
And so, if one thinks I am a liar, I will become a liar. If one thinks that I am a creep, that is what I become. I have tried to limit my interactions around December because it physically exhausts my body to flit between so many emotions and traits. It inevitably ruins my relationships, because I become what they think of me once I slip up in some way around them, even once. The alternative is sitting in a blank state of barely any thoughts, though; a vague conscious recollection of myself among the white noise is all I get.
I've thought long and hard about what caused this. I've even tried therapy for a while, but the professional conclusion was inconclusive, because they've never had a case where extreme and erratic changes in mood and personality are localized to December. No, this isn't medical. This is because of that thing. That thing did something to me, and I don't know what I did to have that happen. I am not waiting any longer for this to end; I'm not sitting around for a month every year to minimize the physical exertion on my brain and body.
I can't take it anymore. I can't take the white noise and static in my head constantly when I'm alone for an entire month. I can't take being aware that I'm becoming what someone else thinks I am from a passing comment or thought; yet being unable to stop it or alter how I am afterwards until I've left their presence.
And so, that's why I'm standing at the edge of a suspension bridge high above the swirling, churning water on a cold winter night.
My car sits next to me, my only remaining ally in this world of isolation. It'll soon be forgotten though. I think back one last time through my Christmas memories, watching them like a movie in my head. I can see myself having fun; I know logically that I am enjoying myself, but I simply cannot feel it. There is nothing there, not anymore.
My legs swing over the edge, dangling as I now sit down. I close my eyes. I don't fear death because I can't. All that I know is that I can't keep being a passenger in my own body, nursing migraines after changing my personality so many times, odd and foreign thoughts causing chronic pain that no medication can stop.
No more waiting, no more enduring.
I lunge forward, falling toward the icy depths.
My body hits the water, and though I feel my nerves begin to work overtime from the freezing temperature of the liquid, my mind is at peace.
I sink below the surface, eyes glazed over as I begin to descend, thoughts growing misty. The white noise begins to overtake everything as I drift towards my salvation.
As everything becomes blurry and muted, I see a spectral shape flowing through the water towards me, beginning to take form as it seems to gallop.
It stops just in front of me, and in my indifferent delirium, I recognize it from my memories.
Those beady, staring eyes, boring into my soul, unblinking, unmoving.
That deer.
It watches me in the almost serene silence as I drift further and further away. Its mouth cracks into a smile, sinister and cruel, full of mocking malice.
But as my vision begins to fade, I realize that I understand why.
As I succumb to the water, white noise giving away to nothingness, I smile back as finally a semblance of clarity reaches me. A natural thought, unplanted by others, manifests in the abyss of fuzzy static.
I just couldn't wait. 
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