Holiday melancholia
Dec. 10th, 2015 10:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaWhat is it about the holidays that inspires an intense heartsickness? Hanukkah is arguably more important to me than Christmas—it feels more intimate and profound—and yet I take some issue with how my family's come to handle it, growing lazier, we don't even make our own latka anymore; and whenever I go home, I realize how distant from my family I've become. My sister's been living there since her diagnosis, and she's always been more comfortable in that social setting. They're noisy and casual and gossip about people I don't know or care to; I go home to feel like an outsider, and to half-ass something important to me.
It makes me want to reclaim the holiday, to learn to make my own latka, to replace what's gone missing—but the very nature of the holiday season means I'm spoon-bereft. I put the average introvert to shame: I rarely socialize, but I rarely feel like I lack anything for it. Except now. This is the only time when I feel like I am actually missing something, that I'm denied something by my sheer inability to ~people~.
On Thanksgiving, Dee's immediate family came into town; they made stuffing and gravy the day before, then left on Thanksgiving itself to visit relatives. I was alone overnight, watching two dogs and four cats; I pulled out the couch and made a big nest of animals, and we watched TV and I ate stuffing and gravy. (Pics or it didn't happen.) It was perfect—enough socialization on either side, but the day itself was stress-devoid and I could actually enjoy my comfort foods.
And between the two, the quiet frustration of Hanukkah and the perfect day that was Thanksgiving, I'm tempted to spend Christmas at the house alone, watching the cats in quiet while Dee goes up to Seattle; but I worry that that tends to far towards not celebrating the holiday at all, and because I can't reclaim it and engaging with it as-is seems unpleasant I'll just ... let it pass me by, which is almost worse.
There are other, personal frustrations which are piggybacking on to this sense of heartsickness, homesickness, longing. I don't have a resolution for any of it.
It makes me want to reclaim the holiday, to learn to make my own latka, to replace what's gone missing—but the very nature of the holiday season means I'm spoon-bereft. I put the average introvert to shame: I rarely socialize, but I rarely feel like I lack anything for it. Except now. This is the only time when I feel like I am actually missing something, that I'm denied something by my sheer inability to ~people~.
On Thanksgiving, Dee's immediate family came into town; they made stuffing and gravy the day before, then left on Thanksgiving itself to visit relatives. I was alone overnight, watching two dogs and four cats; I pulled out the couch and made a big nest of animals, and we watched TV and I ate stuffing and gravy. (Pics or it didn't happen.) It was perfect—enough socialization on either side, but the day itself was stress-devoid and I could actually enjoy my comfort foods.
And between the two, the quiet frustration of Hanukkah and the perfect day that was Thanksgiving, I'm tempted to spend Christmas at the house alone, watching the cats in quiet while Dee goes up to Seattle; but I worry that that tends to far towards not celebrating the holiday at all, and because I can't reclaim it and engaging with it as-is seems unpleasant I'll just ... let it pass me by, which is almost worse.
There are other, personal frustrations which are piggybacking on to this sense of heartsickness, homesickness, longing. I don't have a resolution for any of it.
