| Potentially revealing... |
[Dec. 14th, 2009|09:37 am] |
This could be a good one, I might even learn something about me, and that doesn't happen often these days!
What is the most emotionally challenging aspect of the holidays for you? Do you enjoy this season more or less than you did as a child?
My subconscious jumped on this first question. The holidays ARE emotionally challenging for me. Why? It's convoluted, says my subconscious. Well, first, there's the whole "reject" factor. In my birth family, although I have always been loved, I have also always been a misfit and frequently felt (not necessarily justifiably) rejected. So being around my family has this undercurrent of "will they love me this time?"...which is also linked to my gift giving. See, I love to give gifts, and I'm very, very thoughtful and deliberate about it. I have gone to great lengths, spent hours, days, months, finding Just The Right Thing. Unfortunately, I have rarely gotten the kind of reaction I was hoping for, and often get a downright negative one. For some inexplicable reason, I keep doing it anyway. Well, nothing is ever truly inexplicable with me...I enjoy the challenge and take pride in finding awesomely thoughtful gifts, even when they are received with only a plain thank you. (I do get upset when it's a lackluster thank you, though I don't show it.) Anyway, on top of that, there's the fact that, fairly often, Just The Right Thing simply doesn't present itself, and then I have to give a "throwaway" gift...something that's adequate at best and sometimes just plain lame. Everyone goes through this, but it frustrates someone like me by an extra magnitude, I think. It can (and has) cast a pall over entire gift-giving experiences. Which, obviously, sucks a LOT, especially when the awesome gifts I DID find get reacted to pretty much the same way as the merely adequate one.
*pause, childcare, review* So far, I think the most interesting thing is this "reject factor". If funny how much I've felt rejected so often in my life when I really wasn't. At most, I think most of my family members are neutral about me. (I'm speaking of extended family here.) Some of this is my introversion, some of it is my highly nurturing nature...I go out of my way to always make people I even mildly care about feel loved, and sort of instinctively expect others to do the same. On the introverted hand, I don't enjoy and don't do well small talk/chit chat..it's very much a going-through-the-motions-and-hoping-to-get-through-it thing for me, and I keep wishing that people would somehow magically understand that. And, apparently, SOME people think I'm aloof or don't like them or similar things because I simply don't know what to do and generally think they would prefer I just go away so I do.
Which brings full circle back to the rejection thing. Now, my mother loves me, but favors my sister. My sister was as rejected by me as I was by her, so that cancels out. My father loved and favored me, but was absent a lot from my life for two reasons: work (which is why I obsess about maintaining the work/family balance with Tom) and parenting...he turned, despite his best intentions, into a horrible authoritarian parent when faced with actively parenting us, so deemed it best to parent from the background, which, of course, I didn't appreciate till I was much older. Still, by my mid-teens, Daddy and I had pretty much cleared all that up and we were very close up to his death. Which, as we all know, I have handled beyond extremely well. I really have no baggage about his death, other than the basic "he's gone sooner than he should have been and that REALLY sucks" factor, and I generally handle that just fine.
*long interruption*
So! Um, where was I? *rereads* Digressing, apparently. :P So...I was rejected in school, but also accepted. I had a best friend for a while who was quite popular, I also had close friends who were other misfits/rejects, your standard geek/freak childhood experience, really.
Now, there were a couple of instances with my grandmother, which I've written about before, that could be linked to rejection issues, but that's all been resolved since my early twenties, and I had the issues (though arguably to a lesser degree) before the instances anyway.
Why it is so intense and long-lasting, I still don't know. Guess I'll have to just sit with it. Your input is, as always, completely welcome!
Moving on to the second question...
As a child, I looked forward to getting stuff, but I wasn't very materialistic even as a child. My mother still laughs about how I informed everyone after my eighth grade graduation that I had now gotten everything I ever wanted and literally had nothing to ask for for several years after that. Giving stuff was a bigger challenge as a cash-less child...I enjoyed the holidays more when I was able to give gifts, which is wildly easier for an adult, although I had some good times around that same eighth grade thanks to home economics and shop. Still remember the stuff I made then fondly, not least because it went over well, and both my parents kept the things I made for them for...ever, pretty much. :)
So from that standpoint, I'm happier as an adult...able to give better gifts and enjoy gift giving more, and I also, thanks to my own self-knowledge, am able to ask for stuff I actually want...when I can come up with something, that is!
As a child, the family gatherings were easier, though...I was the oldest, and therefore "head of the kids", a position I was well suited to and enjoyed, though often felt under appreciated.
*another long interruption*
As I aged, the awkwardness of interacting with the adults increased, though, and it wasn't until I was once again in a similar "kid-responsibility" place...when I had my own kids...that I was able to achieve a measure of comfort again. Kids are both an easy, relatively neutral (just avoid too much parenting discussion!) topic of conversation and a good excuse when you need to just give up and go away. In fact, in general, having kids has had the side effect of giving me an excellent excuse/reason for a lot of things that I had trouble excusing/justifying before. Which sounds terribly maladjusted, but isn't as bad as all that, really. I don't need excuses/reasons for THAT much, it's more I had a great need for a few. :)
On yet ANOTHER level, there's the whole religious/spiritual aspect. As a VERY young child, I could just do secular Christmas with everyone else and it was fine. As I got older, more and more the issue of "not actually Christian in any way" was troublesome, reaching a peak in my early to mid teens, I'd say, but heading for another, different peak now that I have children to raise, which includes their spiritual needs and religious education. In adulthood, I became comfortable with a sort of blended celebration of Winter Solstice (the holiday I ACTUALLY celebrate) and secular Christmas. However, with kids, this gets trickier..."everyone" calls it Christmas, and I have trouble insisting on using Solstice, not least because I know I can explain it easily when they're a bit older...but I don't like ingraining the habit in them, either. Things like that. In addition, while I appreciate the spirit of Santa Claus, I don't like dishonesty involved, and so I teach my children about Santa in an honest and positive way...which potentially can cause problems with other parents/kids, another cause of angst this time of year.
So, for the next few years at least, I'll have some added stress as I try to balance teaching my uncommon spiritual beliefs and practices to my children with a common more-secular-than-not celebration which we also participate in to a certain degree.
In the end, I don't know that I enjoy it either more or less than when I was a child...just...differently.
P.S. Made it through the whole thing? Gold star for you! *hugs* |
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concerned
thoughtful
cranky
passionate, of course!
tired
busy
cheerful
rushed
accomplished
proud and loving
stressed
contemplative
sore
I'M fine. My body is f'd up.
curious