The holidays are known to be a time where feelings of inadequacy start to crop up. Emotions are high and tense, often sparked by not being where you imagined yourself being at the end of the year. The job opportunity you didn’t get, the relationship that ended and the self-help courses you promised you’d take but just didn’t have the time. Suddenly making a 30 under 30 list and becoming the ‘first x to do y’ doesn’t seem very likely. Shame. To add to the emotional pile of dread and despair, your finances are brought into sharp focus, which usually happens around the holidays, putting you out of the ‘celebratory’ mood.
Still, we all attempt to put on a brave face for December. And what does that brave face look like? It’s making sure that our lives seem perfectly put-together, putting on a smile for the entirety of the façade and hoping said family does not see past carefully curated surface you.
I remember being younger and having holidays surrounded by what felt like immeasurable joy. During Christmas, a lot of our extended family visited so my parents argued less. My mum cooked all the meals we enjoyed and I didn’t have to be in school doing an uncountable number of assignments. My sister and I spent a lot of time outside playing banger* and sometimes the neighbours had fireworks as well. These neighbours hosted a yearly Christmas party for the entire estate. For about three weeks, the energy around me felt poignant, sentimental and all too heart-warming.
As I get older, I realize how much my feelings about the holidays have changed. When I was in university, I dreaded arriving back home for holidays because it meant everything about me would be scrutinized upon arrival. I was also significantly aware of the rising inequality that happened around celebratory months. A lot of people starving, houseless and unprepared for the cooling weather.
The brave face my mother put on during the holidays now felt obvious to me as an adult, someone who had learned to fake it herself and was now starkly aware of the way everyone else did. My dad also stopped allowing us to go to those yearly Christmas parties hosted by my neighbours on account of the fact that he grew to distrust them. I got bored of having to defend my body and any adult decision I made ever to the families whose yearly presence I had once cherished before. When you become disillusioned, it feels like a piece of paper across your eyes you did not notice there has now been peeled back.
Often times, it’s awkward and uncomfortable to realize that all the things you thought were comforting are now the same things that bring up the utmost anxiety. Talking about education in primary school was enjoyable for me because I was doing well. In secondary school, it was unbearable because I was suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression, fearing for my mother’s life in an abusive home while I was in boarding house and trying to keep the truth of my sexuality from spilling out. In my first few years of university, while in therapy and pursuing the wrong major, I did everything to avoid conversations about school or my eventual graduation date.
Reality sets in as you get older and trust me, it is not pretty. The harshness of it can be somewhat shocking especially for those of us who grew up ‘sheltered’. I realize now that so many aspects of who I am as an adult, especially my coping mechanisms, reflect the upbringing I received when I was younger. Sometimes I want to feel ‘balanced’. I crave the feeling of normalcy, of not having anxious thoughts or having bad memories edge into my current everyday interactions. I want to be able to fully trust myself and my thoughts without feeling like there is a whole chunk of me I do not know missing.
Regardless, I comfort myself with what I do know. I survived, I am learning how to simply be and I know I am a better person than I was ten years ago. My mental health might be debilitating or sometimes destructive even and I still matter. Being neurodivergent does not mean I am unworthy of all the love I try to put out in the universe. It does not mean I am less than. It simply means that a lot of things that seem easy for others might be harder for me and that is a reality I must come to accept.
No amount of therapy is ever going to ‘fix’ my mental state. In fact, my diagnosis has no cure. Ironically, I was not taken aback when I received the document from my psychologist. You see, this feeling was one I had for years, I just needed it validated in wording. A lot of people like me exist and unfortunately, the world continues to vilify us, does nothing to help us and instead chooses to paint us as irredeemable characters.
This holiday, I am hoping that all my people struggling with mental health issues are able to find peace despite the ongoing chaos that can take shape in our minds. I am hoping that we feel support, empathy and love when desperately needed. Merry Christmas babies.
