They belt out “Have a holly jolly Christmas, it’s the best time of the year,” as if joy is compulsory and grief has taken the season off. Reels flood my screen—Mariah Carey hitting that impossible note, Michael Bublé crooning like love has never failed anyone. The air smells like gingerbread cookies and chai sugar biscuits, mulled wine simmering somewhere, strawberries dipped in chocolate—things meant to be shared, not eaten alone.

And amidst all of this, I think of you.

You—not as you are, not even as you were—but as the idea of you. The love of my life. Or maybe just the person I loved like one. The line between the two still blurs on nights like these.

This year hasn’t been kind in love.
It began with letting go of someone who had the best intentions for me—someone gentle, someone safe, someone who tried. Loving them felt like standing in sunlight that never quite reached my skin. And then came the others. A series of almosts. Men who spoke beautifully but showed up poorly. Men who mistook attention for effort, intensity for intimacy. Men who were never worthy of my time, yet somehow occupied my heart longer than they deserved.

I wanted the clichés this year. I won’t lie.
I wanted to be kissed under mistletoe, to laugh with someone whose hands felt like home. I wanted to welcome the new year pressed against a chest that felt certain, counting down seconds that felt like promises instead of reminders. I wanted love that felt festive—easy, mutual, unquestioned.

Instead, December arrived with space.
With empty chairs beside me. With photos I didn’t take. With moments I didn’t live. With the quiet realization that once again, I would be my own plus one.

But Christmas also reminds me of the last time I fell in love.

The last time love happened to me for the first time. The split second for which you were mine. A moment in time in March when you looked at me like nothing else mattered.
Unhesitant. Untaught. Whole.

With you, love lived in subtleties. In the way your hands tied my hair back because you said it looked better that way. In the way I trusted you without needing proof. You were the love of my life once. And then, somehow, you became the loss of it.

How that happened, I will never know.

How tenderness turned brittle. How warmth drained from your touch. How the same hands that once felt careful grew ice-cold—tightening, taking, stealing the air from my chest. There was no dramatic ending. Just a slow unraveling. A quiet forgetting of who I was while loving you.

I will never know how love learned to hurt like that.

So when Christmas arrives dressed in carols and candlelight and promises of miracles, I stay still. I let the world celebrate what it found while I sit with what I lost. I think of mistletoe that never mattered and midnight kisses that never came true. I think of wishes whispered into December nights that went unanswered.

Maybe Santa heard them.
Maybe he just didn’t bring you.

And so this Christmas smells like gingerbread and mulled wine and things meant to be shared, while I learn—again—that some loves remain unwrapped. Some wishes stay on the list forever.

This year, Christmas came.
You didn’t. And the grief of never finding you again in this colour, as mine, washes over me in waves.