Still hate Christmas

[Graysky]

This is the (detail removed by Moderator) Christmas after leaving my partner.We were together for (detail removed by Moderator) years. I always dreaded Christmas as for him it was just another reason to drink heavily and for me walking on eggshells the entire time.
My anxiety levels went through the roof.
Every year got increasingly difficult due to him falling out first with my family , then with his. I always felt torn about who i should be with.
Now we don’t live together we do get on which is good in a way. I actually feel sorry for him.
I should be happy. I keep reminding myself how far I have come. I have my own flat and am quite happy on my own.
Still I hate Christmas. Sadness and anxiety seem to take over with that heavy feeling of dread.
I am not sure if it’s me just wallowing in self pity over the past or something else.
I am sure I am not the only one with these feelings?

[Marmalade]

Christmas is very difficult for a lot of people I think.
I find it upsetting. In my case, Christmas was a rare happy time. His family came and they were lovely. My kids and I adored them. We had such a lovely time. My ex behaved or he removed himself.
Now it’s all lost. We had to lose his family when police became involved. Christmas is me and teenage kids. I do all the work and spend Christmas Day trying to get them out of bed.
Like a lot of ladies on here I expect, I feel tearful at the endless happy families Christmas adverts.
Have you got family and friends you can visit or community events to join? I have tried. This year we have arranged some brief long distance visits to family and old friends during the school holidays. That will be nice. We have gone to some Carol concerts. We live in an isolated location so have had to do our best.
Christmas Day will still be the same as ever though. It’s hard as I still want the fantasy joyful occasion I see on TV, but I’m hoping little by little it will get easier each year.

[Twisted Sister]

Hello Graysky

Its completely normal to suffer this ‘hangover’. Its been seered into your very being how fraught and stressful christmas is, the opportunity to get unreasonably drunk and abusive again and it becomes an ingrained pattern of life of us and our children.

There is also the huge adjustment to make. Like you say, you did the same pattern for all those decades, most of your life, so your associations to bad christmasses are strong.

I don’t think christmas has to be one thing, done a certain way. Its a time to connect with anyone, anywhere, to celebrate how far we have come maybe, especially in doing whatever we want on those days. Revelling in the freedom, indulging and pampering, buying some treats and special meals that we would only have at christmas, celebrating the peace, or being out. Doing wahtever you want.

I’m glad you were brave enough to bring this to the forum, because it does challenge the expectation that everyone should have this big ‘happy’, but I think its the small pleasures that can be the most rewarding.

Your Christmas should be whatever you want it to be. I am glad you have found a way in which you can feel comfortable to communicate with him, so long as he’s no longer abusing you.

I hope more men will step up this year, and every year, to carry the burden of responsibility jointly with their partner and share the ordeal of putting on Christmas for everyone else.

Christmas becomes a very different thing when you are separated from what you knew as family, and its worth acknowledging that for so many who have made the break this can still be such a rough, pressured and upsetting time of year. My heart goes out to all the women and children that will be in fear this Christmas.

Do keep posting and talking through your thoughts

warmest wishes

ts

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