text: It was never Thanksgiving, never Christmas that got me, I think because I could see them coming well ahead of time, years ahead if I wanted. They were like an orbiting comet, you knew when to expect them and if you got hit by one, sure, it would vaporize you. But they weren’t scary because you always knew where they were. It wasn’t the holidays that got me. It was those days that came out of nowhere, like an extinction level asteroid. One minute I’m sleeping like my bed is in a hypergolic chamber, the next minute I feel like I’m watching what looks like a comet in the sky grow and grow until its light is all that I see, and I hear it ripping the air apart in front of it as it closes in, then wham! I’m extinct. Not extinct, not really. But I’ve watched the world go ‘round for 1,128 days, staring out through this small window, mostly alone. I have next to no contact with the world outside. Most days, I don’t think too much about it. This is my life, love it or hate it, and my own choices led me here. No sense in driving myself crazy over some imagined life I could be living instead. I haven’t seen or talked to a member of my family since I went away either. 1,128 days since I heard any of their voices, felt their arms around me, or heard “I love you.” The holidays I see coming. It’s days like today that are hard. Taken by surprise, days when the view from this window looks much less beautiful. Today is the hardest so far. This is the smallest my window has felt since I’ve been aboard the Scout Class : Kestrel Fury. The most alone I’ve felt since I left the surface 1,128 days ago. There are daily check-ins, of course. Weekly discussions with the Psych, regular meetings with a doctor, a dietician, the Cheerleader (he’s a pastor and a life coach, but I like my name for him. He laughs and refers to himself that way now, too.), and various other members of the team. Dry, all business. I’ve never heard “I love you” in a meeting with any of them, nor would I ever expect to. Not a comet, they don't scare me, we see those coming. It’s the asteroids, those colossal titans crashing down on you with extinction-event speed, so fast you never had a chance to brace yourself. So fast, that when you heard the call come across the comm, you barely reached your small window in time to see, just a little white-orange sparkle, a tracer round, a spectacular speck, aiming for home. Barely fast enough to bear witness, barely fast enough to look away in time and not get yourself blinded. That fast, in the blink of an eye, in the most literal sense, so quick, and then, there were no more holidays. We aren’t extinct. There are a few of us floating around out here. Could be another 7,300 days before the last of us goes. Holidays are like comets, and they're just like Earth. They’re gone. They’re all gone and none of them are coming back around.