This will be my last post for this week, and in the next post I no doubt will spend time complaining and reviewing my holiday week. I don’t do well with holidays. I don’t do well with the expectations that come with the holidays. I feel burdened to have feelings that just don’t match the person that I am. I know many can relate to this. The need to find that sense of joy warring with that knowledge that who we are at the holidays doesn’t often match who we are in life.

During holidays, even the lesser ones, we are expected, even obligated, to be what others think should come naturally to us. On July 4th, we are expected to wear the right colors and go to crowded places and watch explosions in the sky. On Valentine’s Day, we are expected to show more love to one another than we do any other day. On New Year’s Eve, we are expected to stay up really late just to count ten numbers. On Christmas morning, we are supposed to be celebrating, laughing, ignoring the mess, the chaos, the obligations. On Thanksgiving, we are supposed to find something we are grateful for while simultaneously stuffing ourselves with food we probably would never actually cook any other time of the year. There are the smiles that are required, the listening, the visits to people you don’t actually like, the planning, the festivities that somehow became traditional, and the awful loss of time and space that is required to not only recharge but survive. How do you survive without recharging, when there isn’t time to do it? Instead, there are feelings you are obligated to show the world so they don’t know what holidays do to you.

I understand certain, actual feelings during the holidays. I imagine if you are a parent who only gets to see their child on breaks or their vacation times, holidays are a godsend. I imagine if you are a parent with a four year-old who finally not only understands the magic of Christmas but is awed by that tree full of presents, there is pride and joy. I understand if you are a person who loves the majesty of Easter services in a beautiful setting there might be a reaffirmation of your faith. I understand if you are a person who enjoys the challenges of making everyone happy, or the anticipation of planning a great moment, or even a person who is defined by the collection of generations, how you enjoy the holidays. But for me, I can’t see past what people – read: family – expect of me to find anticipation or joy in holidays.

I am not a person that is naturally demonstrative with my feelings. Literally, the other day I laughed at something that my husband had sent me, and my teenagers ran down the stairs to figure out what was wrong. (I am not kidding.) I don’t cry in public or where anyone could hear; this means I cry approximately once every other year. I don’t allow my temper to be loose, mostly because it is ferocious and can get me in trouble. I don’t allow my feelings rein not only because people don’t tend to understand them but tend to not know what to do with me in those moments. It’s easier, and simpler, to simply hide my feelings. I have learned this lesson as fully as I learned that one plus one equals two.

But, for some reason, people expect you to be demonstrative during the holidays. They expect that they have the right to know exactly how you feel. They feel it is not only their right but if you don’t show the exact emotions they are expecting from you, somehow you are ruining the holidays for them. When did we ever get to the idea that my feelings should in anyway affect your feelings? How is my happiness or my misery in any way allowed to affect you? Why does the world let it? And if your answer is because someone cares for me and wants happiness and giddiness for me, I am going to bang my head on the wall and say, “get a life.” If you allow me to somehow affect you, on a holiday or any other day, that’s on you.

I don’t want to go to overcrowded places to hold hands and heaven forbid, sing. I don’t want to wear a sweater once a year just so you can get a laugh at my expense. I don’t want to sit at a table and keep my head down and try desperately to eat, when the anxiety and sheer hatred of being forced to interact with people I avoid the rest of year, makes that so hard. I don’t want to stand in lines for a bargain when I can just sit in my pjs and order it online. I don’t want to be forced to show my love once a year so that the rest of the year I can point and say, ‘that’s my position on my feelings towards you’. I don’t even want to try and come up with gifts for you to buy; all it does is tell me you either don’t know what I would want or you don’t care to figure it out. I don’t want to change who I am for a day or a season. I don’t want the moments I have occupied by being forced to behave not as I am, but as you want me to be.

This post isn’t about bashing the holidays themselves. I am a spiritualist (15th century kind) but I do like going to services and listening to the music. I don’t mind fireworks, but not in a crowd. I don’t mind opening gifts from someone who thought about me. I don’t mind putting up my decorations so my teenagers feel like I tried. I don’t mind spending minutes saying hi to those I try and avoid, as long as there is an exit strategy. I don’t mind other’s enjoyments or excitement. I don’t mind people who wrap every one of their emotions in the joy they believe they are giving. I don’t even mind the commercialization of it all.

I do enjoy watching children experience Christmas. I do enjoy giving my children presents that they deserve to get. I don’t mind spending the money to get those presents. I do enjoy the fact that my husband gets a kick out of each year trying to find a new way to either better or ruin the turkey or the roast that we are going to have. I do enjoy decorating my house for my kids’ birthday because they never expect it. I do like tailoring my movie watching experience and even my painting to the season I am in. I do enjoy the pomp and pageantry of these holidays, I just don’t like the obligations to feel.

I am mentally ill. This means that holidays are going to be tough for me even when everything and everyone is catered to me. This means that the stress is going to up my anxiety. It means dealing with people that I am related to, but don’t actually like, is going to cause problems with my diseases. It means the numerous events and activities that those I love expect me to be present for is going to hurt my schedule (both eating and sleeping) which is going to cause problems with my diseases. And if you don’t think that suppressing emotions, thoughts, feelings doesn’t affect my mental illness, then ask me how I am doing in about a month. There is something called seasonal depression. I have decided that I have holiday fatigue, which results in more difficulties than the season is supposed to hold. I don’t like the holidays for one simple reason, the smile and fake excitement I have to present is not worth the damage it will do to my mind. Or the sheer amount of time it takes to recover from even a day.