Surviving Christmas (Warning: feelings dump/whine.)

[Asche]

(I'm not sure how much of this is relevant to the topic of this forum, but at some point, I feel like I've been slicing and dicing my life and putting each slice in a different slot too much already.  It's all part of me, and here is where I've been posting, so here it is....)

Somehow, the period from a week or so before (USA) Thanksgiving until New Year's is always the toughest part of my life.  It feels like it's a never-ending series of things I have to live up to and deal with and accomplish on deadline.  And each year seems harder than the last.  My ex just found out she has cancer, and I'm torn between the impulse to give her as much support as I can and my belief that I have to maintain firm boundaries.  My older son is having troubles with finishing his college work that are disturbingly reminiscent of my younger son's disconnect from life.  And I've been suffering for the past  year from something -- depression?  fatigue? age? -- that has made just getting through the day a struggle and made each disappointment or setback feel like it might be the final push that sends me sliding into the abyss.  Even pleasurable activities now require so much effort that it almost doesn't seem worth the effort.

This week, I decided I may have to drop out of a group I've been going to where we discuss various topics in order to get to know one another on a deeper level.  Getting there has always been a struggle, so that I'm usually late, and this time, they confronted me about it.  It's bothered me that I can't explain even to myself why it's such a struggle, and I'm now feeling like I simply can't deal with both getting there and with vainly trying to explain to them why it's so hard.  (Reminds me of how, when I was a kid, I could never explain why I couldn't get my school work done.)  Since then, the sadness?  depression? has been hitting me like a physical pain in the chest.  I'd break out crying, if I were able to cry.  (I haven't been able to cry since I was a kid, either.)

Since I wasn't sure how healthy my ex would be, I offered to host Christmas dinner, so she, my kids, and her brother and his family all came.  This brother has never particularly liked me (though he's polite), especially since the divorce, so I hoped his agreeing to come meant things were better.  I wore a skirt (as I do most of the time), and nobody seemed bothered (my ex even complimented me on my sewing skills and on the ribbons I'd sown on the skirt, sort of like stripes.)  But this evening, they all went out to dinner without inviting me, and I moped, despite the fact that I was feeling tired and wouldn't have wanted to go, anyway.  I suppose if I weren't feeling so beaten down already, I might have had an easier time shrugging it off.  And of course, there's the voice that says, of course they don't want anything to do with you, you always do everything wrong and offend people.

Christmas Eve wasn't bad -- I sang in the church choir, and singing takes me out of myself.  It's like I become one with the music, and the concentration involved in singing my part and not screwing it up keeps my mind from thinking about the misery du jour.  Sometimes the altered consciousness lasts for an hour or so.

I'm looking forward to New Year's, though.  I'll be going away with the kids to a place where there's stuff to do, but you don't actually have to do anything (they cook for you!), and my kids will see friends.  I may just sit or lie on a couch and watch the world go by.  Or play guitar or flute, if I feel like it.  (And everyone is just fine with however I feel like dressing.  And sometimes I even get hugs!)

[jojoglowe]

The holidays are crazy times for me as well. I'm sorry to hear about your ex's health, hopefully it was caught in the early stages. It is very nice that you invited her over for the holidays.

Christmas Eve wasn't bad -- I sang in the church choir, and singing takes me out of myself.  It's like I become one with the music...

^I love this feeling, I get it when I play bass or dance.

Well it sounds like you've got a relaxing New Years planned, I hope you enjoy! I am hoping to have a similar, relaxing New Years. I wish you the best in 2014!

[Space Pirate]

I share your pain, Asche.  I'm lucky to have a supportive partner, but Christmas means spending time with my family and working on social services it usually means my clients are on their worst behavior.  For Christmas this year my partner helped me paint my nails up like candy canes, and I put a little glitter in my hair for the Christmas Eve party my father puts on.  I'd worn some to a family party a few weeks before, with even bolder nail polish and no one had any problem with it, but this time my otherwise "liberal" stepmother called me "creepy" and a "pervert" for it.  I live in New Hampshire, and so outside of a few small cities the population gets pretty rural and most of her family proudly considers themselves rednecks.  No one called me a ->-bleeped-<- likely because my dad was there but they've posted enough stuff on Facebook on the subject to get unfriended.  My dad is of the opinion that this is yet another form of "provocation" because I want attention and I'm "contrarian" by nature.  I wound up hiding in the finished basement with my six-year-old niece pretending to be dinosaurs for most of the night.

So my Dad *is* trying.  My last pair of PVC pants had worn out and he volunteered to buy me a new pair for Christmas.  But they decided to make us open them in front of the rest of the family and it took about two seconds for the laughter to start.  I almost left then and there, but then we had to gather up the food and all the stuff we got, so there was just this awful 15 minutes of lingering, feeling unbelievably embarrassed and uncomfortable.  Two days later my Dad would give me a made up story about how my stepmom just "wasn't expecting it" along with a lecture about how I shouldn't "provoke people who won't get you," to which I responded that if I was so bad about provoking my stepmother's relatives he could celebrate the holiday without me next year, after which he backtracked and launched another load of BS, then fell back on his time-honored tradition of trying to bribe me off by offering to take me to a local greenhouse to buy plants (I'm an avid gardener).  I told him I'd think about it.

I don't speak to my mother, and apparently the whole clan was gathered at my grandmother's place because she may not see another.  My mother is apparently living with my grandmother now (my grandmother and I got along very well, and she was always accepting of me), and I can't really see her without seeing my mother.

Ironically my extremely conservative in every way in-laws are totally okay with the androgyny, and we spent Christmas Day with them.  It was mercifully quiet and low-key.  My fiancee even gave me makeup in front of them and no one said a word.

It's harder somehow when it comes from someone close to you.  I'm used to being called a ->-bleeped-<-, even when I'm dressing male.  I never really get used to it from my immediate family.

[Kaelin]

Let's whine together.

Christmas tends to be alright for middle-class heteronormative Christians, but it's not so good if you're outside that group and your relatives aren't accepting of that reality.  With the hope of keeping things bright and cheery and ~in the Christmas spirit~, it goes fabulously for people who want to keep drama limited to things related to remodeling, their favorite sports team, or that thing their kid's doing now.  Some may even ramble about politics, but basically Christmas and Thanksgiving are saccharine affairs where no one is supposed to show a trace of vulnerability (although they may expose someone else).  That vulnerability issue is perhaps even more of a nuisance since people aren't granted many outlets to show vulnerability, and the feeling of disconnection is perhaps most visceral when you're ostensibly around family that loves each other (an empty assumption if they haven't gone through ordeals to develop "love" to that point).

I'm about at the point where hanging around anyone over the age of about 25 (and especially 40+) at such a gathering is a waste of time.  In my experience, younger people are not as conditioned to interact with each other in those terms and would at least prefer to play rather than just gossip.

I think the weird part (and this may sound crazy coming from an agnostic in a mostly-Catholic and almost-entirely Christian extended family) is that no one talks about Jesus at Christmas.  People may say they went to church in the morning, and one family did a traditional prayer before eating the meal (which they'd do at other gatherings), but other than a small nativity display, the occasion was otherwise secular.  Maybe I should just think about this in terms of the pagan festival instead...

[Asche]

Christmas tends to be alright for middle-class heteronormative Christians, but it's not so good if you're outside that group and your relatives aren't accepting of that reality.

I haven't even tried to come out to my family (brothers, sister, and their families) about my gender-variance (mostly how I dress.)  The nearest lives 140 miles away, and I seldom see any of them more than once a year.  My oldest brother is so anxious about his masculinity that when I chose pink for the family reunion T-shirts one year, he not only refused to put it on, he tore it up to make rags to clean his guns with.  (Need I add that he lives in Georgia (USA)?)  At the rate of one contact per year, I think we'd all die of old age before they came to terms with how I usually dress.

Anyway, I was driving my kids and me back from our New Year's celebration (48 hours at a retreat center with people we've been doing this with for years), and decided to swing by my brother's place (no, he's not the gun nut), so I changed out of the skirts and such that I'd been wearing all week and put on "male drag" for the visit.

BTW, the New Year's celebration was pretty much what I hoped it would be.  What with my depression and general level of despair, I mostly hung out and worked on a dress I'm making, instead of being a social butterfly or making music all the time, but that felt good.  And people are pretty accepting of me, even complimenting me on my skirts and jumpers.  I couldn't help noticing how many of the young (under 6 yrs.) boys were digging skirts and dresses out of the dress-up closet, and how everyone was fine with it.  Sure is different from when I was growing  up!