This was a VERY difficult Christmas for me.
I usually survive by working through the holidays, since Thailand doesn't officially recognize Christmas, but this year I was off all December, so had to face myself.
My daughter came to visit on Christmas last year, and stayed for two months, so that was wonderful, but this year it seemed totally empty without her.
The Thai king recently died, so the entire country is in mourning, so I couldn't count on the festive lights, Christmas trees, music, outdoor booths, etc that usually fill the streets and malls of Thai towns and cities from late December through Feb, combining both Thai and Chinese New Year festivals with Christmas.
It was dark and silent, even in the main modern malls...like in some post-apocalyptic movie.
I had no idea it would affect me so negatively.
I went shopping anyway, went to the beach, went hiking, went birding in the mountains, did online teaching, cleaned my apartment, watched Netflix movies with my pet Asian Fairy-bluebird, blabbed online with my USA friends (that I have left, after the election) and messaged with my daughter.
My ex-husband began cautiously negotiating to come live with me, saying he's going to transition into living as a non-binary female, but this only triggered more stress response, since when we were together he was a dangerously treacherous and jealous type, who tended to take secret revenge for imagined slights. Yet rejecting him seemed like I was not willing to help a fellow transgender person, perhaps what he'd counted on, being a master manipulator, while I'm a straight-dealing male type.
Yet through it all, if I stopped for a moment, I could feel the faint idea that I don't even know what I am, where I fit in. The derris scandens capsules keep me functional and happy for the most part, but in the silence I missed my daughter, missed being part of a family, having a significant other, attending family gatherings, being accepted in society, making my children proud of me. Right now, I live as a voluntary exile.
And it's not because I transitioned and was rejected.
I look the same, but it was my own internal awakening to my transmale reality that drove me abroad, to a country where I somehow knew I'd be seen as normal.