The Holiday Blues

Photo by Roberto Nickson on Unsplash

At my mom’s, my sister and I sit side by side on the loveseat, her Micro Mini Goldendoodle asleep on her lap. I pop a gingersnap into my mouth and cuddle up in the blanket she knitted me with her bare hands—no hook or needle. Amazing. 

“Are you lonely?” I ask her, though the room is full of our closest family members, including our children.

“Yes,” she replies, simultaneously continuing another conversation across the room.

“What’s that about?” I ask her. “I mean, you’re single and your kids are grown. But I’m married with a preteen. Why am I lonely?”

“You just have to talk yourself out of feeling that way,” she says, sipping her eggnog and rum. “You are not your thoughts.”

“Where’d you hear that, from a monk on Tik Tok?” I realize that mindfulness must be trending in order for it to be on my sister’s radar.

“A podcast,” she says, showing me the landing page on her phone. “You should check it out.”

It’s Christmas and I’m crying, off and on, even though I’m heavily medicated for the occasion. 

“Go into the bathroom and wash your face,” my mom says when the tears start again, instigated simply by looking at her tree. “It makes your son very uncomfortable to see you cry.”

In fact, my son is busy playing with his new lightsaber in the other room. He’s never minded seeing me cry; we are open with our emotions in my little family of procreation.

My family of origin, however, not so much. When I see my niece crying five minutes later, I give her a hug and tell her, “It’s okay to cry. We’ve got to feel our feelings.” And it’s as if I’ve given her a true gift.

My other niece is rattling on about how she has three associates degrees and is working on a teaching credential. She works in a preschool for autistic children. 

Why is Christmas an excuse for everyone to spout off their wildest successes? Why am I comparing myself to my nieces and nephew, who are a generation younger than me? I’m proud of them. They’re doing fantastic.

At the same time, I’m feeling bitter and inferior. And unemployed. 

“My life is not adding up to much,” I tell my husband later, as we drive down Christmas Tree Lane, a street canopied by towering trees with lights twinkling throughout the branches. 

“Is your life a math equation?” he asks me, turning down the holiday station on Sirius XM radio, which is playing Sam Cooke’s “This Little Light of Mine.”

“I just feel like another year has gone by, and I’m not doing what I want to be doing, career-wise.” I feel tears coming again, for some reason.

“You got a master’s degree this year,” he reminds me. “And you’re teaching that writing class at the senior center.”

“Yeah, but I’d like to start making a living off my writing at some point,” I say. “I told you about that woman Sarah knows who supported her family writing romance novels.”

“Why not you?” he asks. “I bet that would be easy for you.”

Easy? I’ve never read a romance novel in my life. I’ve spent the past twenty-five years developing my own style and voice and now I’ve determined it’s not good enough to land me a literary career. Now, I have to learn how to write stuff that sells. 

I’ve always been that person in my family that was the resident fuck-up, identified patient, certified crazy person. Then I became the first person on my mom’s side of the family to graduate university, then go on to grad school. 

It’s lonely being the black sheep. But it’s also lonely when the other sheep start to follow. 

It seems that anyone with a brain could make something of their life once they get a master’s degree. But here I am, feeling more hopeless than ever. 

I remember that I’m trying to navigate a mental illness. A disability. That I suffer every single day. Things have never been easy for me, my journey has never looked like other people’s. As much as I hate to admit that, it’s true.

Home at last on Christmas night. My husband and I sit side by side on the couch. I’m wearing my noise canceling headphones and my new blanket. I’m on Planet Writer, population 1. 

“You can watch a movie with us later,” he says, as he eats some sickly sweet hodgepodge candy mix from Trader Joe’s.

I respond with an almost imperceptible shake of the head.

“No? You don’t want to watch a movie with us?” He touches my cheek and I flinch.

Then it hits me. I’m lonely because I alienate myself from people. Or my head does anyway. My instant reaction is, “Oh, really, can I, can I please? Can’t you see I’m fucking BUSY?” My thinking does this automatically. What was it my sister said? Tell my head to shut up? Don’t feel it?

But wait. I’m overstimulated and I want nothing more than to be alone right now. I’ve been around a sea of family all day long and it’s all too much. 

It’s not just that. I’m a special brand of depressed that only turns up around the holidays.

Especially when we’re missing someone on Christmas. What about my father-in-law, who sat on the couch with a single tear running down his cheek? He and Helen were together sixty-four years before she died almost two years ago. What about Grandpa Paul, who lost Grandma Bea at the beginning of the pandemic? He’s still hanging on, even in assisted living. And what about my husband, missing his oldest son, who would have been twenty-seven this year? As another year goes by, the loss gets more painful as life goes on and our loved ones miss more and more of our lives.

There’s plenty of reasons to be sad on days like this. Sometimes we just have to ride our feelings out, see them through until the end. In the meantime, it’s normal to feel lonely around other people. It’s just a sign that we’re going inward, which is what we do when we feel emotional pain.

Here’s a toast to all of us who are lonely, especially around our loved ones.