On Christmas

Last Updated on: 7th December 2021, 06:51 am

Around this time every year, I usually end up talking about how insane or how much of a pain in the ass Christmas time is. But no matter what I say about it, I’ve always got the holiday spirit. All the travelling, the ceaseless visiting, the not sleeping, the hosting get togethers that won’t end, the awful music, the spending far too much money, none of it has ever been enough to outright kill my joy for the season. Sometimes it takes me a while, but eventually I start feelin’ it and everything’s great. exhausting, but great.

but this year…this year I’m not so sure. Instead of the holiday spirit, each passing day that brings us closer to Christmas fills me with a horrible dread. I want no part of it. No get togethers, no travelling, no music…ok, that last one goes without saying, but the others, that’s weird. I don’t want to hate Christmas, but right now I can honestly say I hate Christmas and I would like nothing more than to be able to shut myself off from the world until the whole damn thing ends and things get back to normal. The thought of doing anything Christmas related completely depresses me and ruins not only my day, but my entire state of mind. The scary part is that I’m not entirely sure why. I’ve got my reasons and they’re all valid, but I’ve dealt with things far worse than anything going on currently and hardly any of them have been enough to make me feel like this for this long, so why now?

So what if there’s a bit of tension in the family, thanks to a select few people there’s been tension in the family forever. There’s people I’d rather not spend time with, but who doesn’t have those? I hate winter, but that can’t be helped. Yet another year will pass that I won’t get to spend Christmas proper with Carin, but the fact that I started that sentence off with yet another year says it all.

I guess this is just the year when all these little things have finally finished adding up and becoming one big monster that’s getting to be too much to take. I had a less extreme form of this feeling last year and it had been building for years before that so maybe I should have seen it coming, but even last year it was pretty easily beaten. this year…this year I don’t think so.

And that’s another thing. It doesn’t feel like it’s Christmas time. Last year doesn’t feel like last year, it feels like maybe 5 or 6 months ago tops. To me it feels like I just finished Christmas and now they’re making me do it again. It can’t possibly be time already, can it? We just got rid of the snow and I just found homes for all the stuff I was given last year…and now here we are again. It’s not right, especially when Christmas comes with such growing frustration and sadness.

Why can’t I spend Christmas in my own home with my own little family instead of being displaced for a week and a half? Have I not earned that right? I know why it doesn’t happen, but at this point that doesn’t make it any easier. It would be nice to be like everybody else who gets to fall down in their own beds at the end of the day’s festivities instead of sleeping on different couches and in different beds all the time. It would be nice to relax on my own terms instead of waiting for everybody else to have enough and decide to give me a spot to lie down and a few moments peace. It would be nice to be able to come and go as I please instead of being stuck until somebody else decides it’s time to leave. It would all be nice, but it seems like such a far off dream that the whole thing just feels hopeless. Christmas is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year, not a gaping pit of despair that you charge headlong into, unable to do anything to change your course.

My circumstances may be mine or I may be speaking for 3 quarters of the world, I don’t know. Am I alone? If you’ve ever felt the same way, how did you deal with it? Is the best I can do just go through the motions and act like I’m having a grand old time? That’s what I’m gonna do and I’ll probably convince myself that at the very least I’m having a bit of fun here and there, but something has to change. The feeling gets stronger every year and it can’t keep going on like this. It could always be worse. At least I’ve got people I care about to spend Christmas with. But it still kind of sucks and I feel powerless to make it any better.

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