I’d watched enough Stranger Things to know the Upside Down was supposed to be the darker, stranger version of the world everybody else was living in. That Thanksgiving, I didn’t need a portal to understand the concept.
I was home alone in Phoenix, off work because it was Thanksgiving, with nowhere I needed to be and apparently nowhere nearby that wanted to feed me. Every restaurant around me seemed to be closed. No turkey. No stuffing. No mashed potatoes. No pumpkin pie. My Thanksgiving dinner was a bologna and cheese sandwich.
Honestly, that part was pretty on brand.
Anybody who knows me knows I’m perfectly capable of turning two slices of bread, some bologna, and cheese into a meal and calling it good. I wasn’t standing in the kitchen mourning the absence of a Norman Rockwell dinner table. I made the sandwich, sat down in front of the TV, and let Thanksgiving happen around me in the quietest possible way.
Still, there was no pretending the day felt completely normal.
Thanksgiving is built around noise. Kitchens full of people. Somebody asking when the turkey will be done. Somebody opening the refrigerator every thirty seconds as if something new might magically appear. Football on TV. Kids running from room to room. Too much food. Too many dishes. Too many conversations happening at once. Even when Thanksgiving is chaotic, the chaos is part of what makes it Thanksgiving.
My apartment had none of that.
Two of my kids texted me. My best friend checked in too. I wasn’t forgotten, and I wasn’t unloved. But there’s a difference between hearing from people and having people in the room with you. Once the phone went quiet again, it was just me, the TV, and a bologna and cheese sandwich that was never going to be mistaken for a holiday feast.
There was something else sitting in the room with me too, even if I couldn’t see it. I was waiting for the results of the Decipher test. I didn’t know yet what the numbers were going to say. I only knew that somewhere, information about my future existed and I didn’t have it yet.
Waiting has its own kind of loneliness.
People can care about you while you wait. They can ask how you’re doing. They can tell you they’re thinking about you. But nobody can crawl inside your head and wait there with you. At some point, it’s just you and whatever your imagination decides to do with the unanswered questions.
That Thanksgiving, mine had plenty of material.
Maybe that’s why the Upside Down kept coming to mind. In Stranger Things, it looks like the familiar world, but everything is off. The streets are there. The buildings are there. The shape of the place is recognizable. It’s just darker, stranger, and not quite the way it’s supposed to be.
That was Thanksgiving for me.
The holiday was there. The date on the calendar said so. The TV reminded me. Every commercial seemed to feature a family gathered around a table large enough to feed a small town. But my version looked different. Mine had one person, one couch, one sandwich, and one unanswered test.
And somehow, there was still something funny about it.
I remember looking at that sandwich and thinking that if this was Thanksgiving dinner, at least cleanup was going to be easy. No roasting pan. No mountain of dishes. No arguing over who got the last piece of pie. There are advantages to the Upside Down if you’re willing to look for them.
I don’t want to pretend I loved being alone. I didn’t. Loneliness doesn’t get easier just because you can make a joke about it. But the day wasn’t tragic either. It was simply strange. A little lonely. A little funny. A little uncertain. Mostly ordinary in ways Thanksgiving usually isn’t.
That may be the part I remember most.
Life doesn’t always match the picture we’ve been given of what a holiday is supposed to look like. Sometimes the table is full. Sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes gratitude comes easily. Sometimes you have to look around a quiet room and decide what still counts.
That day, a couple of texts counted. My best friend checking in counted. Having food in the refrigerator counted, even if nobody would ever put bologna and cheese on the cover of a Thanksgiving cookbook. Being home counted. Having another day to sit there and wonder what came next counted too.
Nobody chooses the Upside Down. Sometimes you just find yourself there.
So I ate my sandwich, watched TV, answered the messages that came in, and let the day be what it was instead of what it was supposed to be.
It wasn’t the Thanksgiving I would’ve planned.
But then again, stranger things have happened.
