friday.

[sunfright]

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.