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Entry tags:
friday.
The holidays will soon be upon us. I know these are painful times for a lot of people, they are certainly very complex and frustrating times for me. I really love December, I love the candles and the X-mas tree, I love wrapping presents and marking each day, counting down to the 24th (in Denmark, we celebrate X-mas on the 24th rather than the 25th). I love X-mas carols, I love watching the Nutcracker and Lucifer's Tears. I love every day up till X-mas Eve. I love seeing my friends and wishing them a peaceful time.
I just hate X-mas Eve itself. It's not just something recent that's come over me in turn with my relationship to my parents getting worse, it's seriously always been that way. I don't remember a single X-mas Eve at home when I wasn't a bundle of anxiety and guilt complexes. I think part of it I've inherited from my mom who has very bad associations with X-mas from her own family, but a lot of it is also just a result of having traumatized parents whose perfectionistic tendencies always ruined the experience of peace and quiet that X-mas is supposed to be.
It was always with massive expectations and the complete certainty that we would never meet them.
X-mas and New Year's were the two times when I would, more than any other time of year, which is saying something, never feel good enough. Always feeling wrong and/or guilty.
That feeling has never left, not even now, living with my girlfriend. X-mas Eve has never been "safe".
So I've begun trying to stock up on good experiences throughout December instead. I've made a tradition of writing an X-mas calendar for my girlfriend, with a little text or story each day until the 24th. I wasn't gonna make one this year, due to NaNoWriMo, but although I've gotten off to a late start, I've managed to get half the calendar done already. Will be working through the first couple of days of December, and finish it there. This year it's RP-related, a bunch of stories about this guy who's part of a universe we've worked on for a literal decade, my girlfriend and me. A couple of years ago, though, I wrote a gothic lesbian romance mystery. I'm still way too proud of that one.
We're putting up our (fake, plastic) X-mas tree on Sunday and then it'll be lighting up our living room for the rest of December. That right there is my favourite part. I love the lights. I love the music. I love my girlfriend and my friends the people who make me feel like maybe one day I'll be able to not need my parents like I feel I do now, although they've never done anything good for me.
I love X-mas. Just not X-mas Eve that I have to spend at home. I guess that's the long and short of it.
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I do the same. Just try to focus on what I love about the holiday and December. It really does help!
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Thanks for the encouragement. I'll keep fighting!
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This is so wonderful. I'm so sorry Christmas Eve is so tough, but this is such a wonderful thing, this stocking up of good things to defend against that awful feeling. I'm really rooting for you with this.
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The past couple of years have been better, but sometimes it feels like such a slow process that nothing seems to move forward at all. Then, I have lovely winter days in between and I realise they do move after all.
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