So this is Christmas?

So this is Christmas?
It's 6.30 am. I'm not awake because I'm dying to know what the glove-shaped present beneath the tree is. I'm awake because I keep waking up in the dark with an immediate thought of
what the fuck am I doing
with this life
I've attached a name to it. I call it mine. I've given it a beginning (something I call a first memory, Christmas 1982) I've predicted an end to it, but it's the bit inbetween I'm struggling with.
“Your life has gotta have some direction.” said someone.
“Sure,” said I.
When I was a kid there was a brook down the road from me. It's course went through a tunnel under the road and into no-one-cares-land. It got filled up with crap as if everyone was hoping that that weak stream had the strength to carry all our junk out to sea. If that were true we would have all been throwing ourselves in.
I tried to dam that brook with a pair of old boots and some sticks and stones. I spent four hours down there. When I got home mum was going crazy because I wasn't with the other kids playing football round the back of the garages. I wasn't even at my neighbours. I had to listen to her shout. The worst thing about it was that after four hours the water kept finding a way back to the shopping trolley, the bent pushchair, the carrier bags and all the other shit that filled that little brook.
So this is Christmas?
Another year gone. There's a glow from the street-lamps across the living room curtains, the light seeping into the room, slowly pulling apart the dark into separate shapes and sizes.
If I was standing up I would be over a foot taller than this year's Christmas tree.
I'm laying down. On the sofa-bed. Wide awake. It's something to do with the patch on my arm dripping nicotine into my blood-stream. If I was a comedian I would say it was a vein attempt to try and be a less irritable son at Christmas-time.
Look Father Christmas, I'm being a good boy this year.
I'm not a comedian, but next to my pillow there are jokes. At 3am I woke up. I groped in the dark with my mind and then with my hand. My hand reached a lamp. I looked around for something to distract me from that
what the fuck am I doing?
thought. I sat at the end of the sofa-bed staring at the pine needles on the presents. I turned on the tv and ran 99 channels in a single sigh
So this is Christmas?
I thought. I picked up the box of crackers stuffed beside my dad's chair. They were already open from last year. I quietly pulled apart one. There's no reason for them to make a noise unless you want it to make a noise.
A plastic frog slid onto the bed. A paper crown followed. I found the joke, but it didn't mean anything to me. I opened three more until I found one that read:
'Question: What's the problem with families? Answer: They're all relative.'
I laughed like an insomniac and laid back down.
So this is Christmas?
It's seven thirty and it hasn't even begun. The patch on my arm is itching like crazy.
This is Christmas,
let's hope it's a good one...