An experience I never expected was waking up alone on Christmas day in an empty house. This year, I woke up and scooped my phone out from under my pillow to see floods of messages wishing me a Merry Christmas and thanking me for the gifts I had given. Oddly, these messages, simultaneously, brought me sadness and happiness. Happiness, because I was warmed to see my loved ones names on my screen and photos of their kids opening presents and smiling from ear to ear. Sadness because I was alone, in my bed, with nobody to laugh and smile with on Christmas morning like my friends & family were. I forced myself out of bed to make a coffee and stared at the presents under my tree – I wasn’t excited to open them. I wasn’t really even remotely interested in Christmas day at all.
I opened my presents and sent my thank you messages and suddenly became overwhelmed remembering that I am loved, I am thought of frequently by my friends & family and I am never truly alone but I could not shake the feeling of complete loneliness away. As I journeyed back up to my bedroom I stopped in the mid-staircase and began crying, not the loud whaling kind of crying. The soft, almost silent, unending stream of tears kind of crying – the silent pain I carry being released. In that moment, I felt like I was looking at my life through someone else’s eyes, sort of like an out of body experience. I have never felt “alone” on Christmas Day because I have always woken up in my parents house on Christmas morning, with my parents & brother, knowing my Grand parents would be over in the morning to open pressies with us all and eat some breakfast before retiring to their houses to get dressed for Christmas dinner. No later than 3.30pm would the Aunties, cousins, kids, gran’s & papa’s arrive in their glad rags ready to get drunk and tell stories about past Christmas day shenanigan’s and get the annual photos taken before we get too merry.
Of course, I told absolutely nobody about the crying. Painted on my best “I’m Happy, It’s Christmas” face and went to my parents for dinner, just us 3 and my Gran, where we laughed, spoke to family on Zoom and I forgot about just how lonely I felt only a few hours prior.
Let me explain something – I am good at being alone, I am very independent and always have been, I enjoy my own company and quiet time. That being said, there is absolutely no comparison to being in a room with people who love and cherish you. I simply miss the feeling of being encompassed by that kind of love and warmth that you can only really get when you have your family/friends/partner surrounding you laughing and creating memories to talk about the year later.
This is a selfish excerpt, I know. I know there are families who have to do this every year when there isn’t a pandemic, I know there are families who have been torn apart because of loss. I know there are families who cannot see their children or who are making sacrifices to give their children a better future. Your pain and loneliness matters. This is just how I felt, and writing it gives me some closure, it’s part of how I heel.
Put on Your Brave Face 