I never have a New Year's mood, I don't really understand what it is. Everyone is running around, rejoicing. And for me, these are just regular calendar days.
I don't decorate anything, I don't buy any Christmas trees, toys. I have a garland hanging at home, but I never take it off and use it instead of a night light. If you come to my place, you won't understand from my apartment that it's New Year's time.
As a child, we always celebrated the New Year with our family. I was often sent to my grandparents in Tagil, there was a short feast, then my grandparents went to their rooms and watched TV. And I was looking for something to do, and I got attached to someone who had a more interesting program on TV. With my parents, we usually went to the ice town.
Among the warmest childhood memories, I have a fragment when my dad and I rode the slides and rolled in snowdrifts in the forest park.
That's when, as a child, I felt the festive atmosphere. I was waiting for gifts, fireworks. The holidays were calm and carefree. When you grow up, they're not like that anymore.
In the 9th grade, I was already bored. I didn't have many friends, I celebrated the New Year with my parents, but it wasn't interesting, I started to get tired of it.
But the turning point in my attitude to the holiday was the 10th grade. I was celebrating with my parents, but I was invited to visit by a guy whom we had met just a month before.
My parents were constantly fighting at that time: they were in the process of getting divorced, which I found out later. When we sat down at the table with them, a quarrel began. I didn't feel very well, I had a fever of 38.6.
But it was so sick at home that I didn't want to stay there.
Together with my parents, I listened to the chimes, packed up and went to visit my new friend.
There was a whole group of high school students there, it was even fun. I drank some tequila, felt like I was drowsy, took a nap. And when I woke up, I realized that I was not feeling well at all.
I walked home as if in a trance, bent in half. My parents were already sleeping in different rooms to the sound of the TV. I took my temperature, and I have it above 40. And I fell down.
In short, I was not fine during those holidays. I spent all the time in bed, didn't really eat anything, didn't walk. I just took my medicine and slept. My girlfriend left me because she was offended that I didn't go anywhere and didn't give her a gift. It was a "wonderful" year.
Since then, the new years have not seemed to go well. It always happens at the end of the year — like everyone else, it seems to me — some kind of rubbish.
First of all, everyone starts fussing abruptly, they constantly ask where you will celebrate, what plans you have, what you will do. And I have no plans, I don't want to build them, I don't care at all, I want to relax. I feel great at home when I watch something interesting or play.
But for some reason they can't leave you alone. It is believed that it is strange and sad to sit alone like this. And it turns out such social pressure when your environment tries to infect you with a New Year's mood, make you rejoice as much as they do, plan as they do. And this is only more depressing.
I have a separate problem with New Year's gifts. Gifts are stressful for me.
You need to spend a lot of time, effort, and choose something for everyone ‑ not because you want to, but because it's necessary, because everyone has to give something to each other. And I hate giving something for show.
I even remember from what moment I had such a dislike for gifts. In my third year, I dated a girl, and before the New Year we agreed to give each other some cute trinkets.
I bought her a bear cub, and since she was a metalhead, I sewed this bear a vest with patches, put a ring in his ear and all that. I really tried to keep it simple, but sweet, as we agreed.
And so I give her this bear. And she gives me an iPod… It was a terrible feeling. I hate it when people give me expensive gifts.
And in general, gifts are a burden for me, especially on such a calendar occasion.
In the second year, classmates offered to make a gangster-themed party. I thought it was a good idea. Then, judging by the remaining videos, everyone had fun, I was dressed up as a Snow Maiden. But I got so drunk that I missed the whole party. It wasn't bad, but I didn't feel like a New Year, it was just a noisy collective gathering that could have taken place on any other day.
Another time it was with a girl. Usually, when I was an adult, I made attempts to decorate the house or celebrate mentally, it was always for the sake of the girls. It was very important to them, and I didn't want to spoil their mood.
So this time we organized a holiday, set the table, cooked a lot of mulled wine. I bought thermoses so that my friends and I could go on a roller coaster with warm drinks.
But when the guests arrived, some kind of chaos began.
We were late for the slides, someone poured wine over my girlfriend's favorite chair, broke glasses and dishes, burned the windowsill, almost broke my guitar.
I don't understand how it happened, but in the end my girlfriend burst into tears, and I just kicked everyone out. And the next morning I found out that my money had also been stolen.
That was the end of my attempts.
It seems to me that the attitude towards the New Year depends very much on how your family treated it when you were little, and also on your current environment. If everything was kind and festive in your childhood, then you grow up with a warm feeling for these days. Sometimes these warm feelings are instilled by friends already in adulthood. That didn't happen to me.
But I'm not worried about it, I'm not trying to sum up any results, I don't think I'm missing anything. For me, the New Year is overrated, because all this can be done at any time, and not abruptly in the last week of December.
To be happy and get together, there are other reasons, more important or more spontaneous. And to eat olivier, you don't need a reason at all.
For some, the New Year is a rite of passage: you need to summarize everything, make plans, turn the page. But I sum up my personal results not on New Year's Eve, but on my birthday. It seems more logical to me.
I don't remember when I got something good from this holiday. Probably when I was lying in a snowdrift with my dad as a child. At the same time, I try not to spoil the holiday for other people. I don't go around with a sour face, I try not to grumble, I don't think that those who love the New Year are stupid. It just so happened that some people genuinely like it and it's important to them, while others don't. And that's okay.
What I'm going to do this New Year, I have no idea and I don't want to come up with. Besides, I recently lost my mother, and now I'm not in the mood for a festive mood at all.
