Not bad this year. I have not been hit by seasonal depression, at least not yet. Usually I would be feeling swallowed alive by the first week of December. It is Boxing Day, the day after, and I feel...okay? I still have to get past New Year's before I can declare myself healed. I think I'm getting there. There has been nothing special about this Christmas and really I didn't do a lot. Never do.
Christmas Eve I spent home alone, and listening to CBC Radio One was not at all helpful. Everyone was calling in to brag about the wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations with their families and friends. A perfect Christmas such as to give Norman Rockwell a run for his money. And it sounded as if every single Canadian but me was going to have a perfect holiday, all warm and fuzzy togetherness and eating and drinking and singing and playing, and that I was the only person on earth who was spending this holy night alone, reading, eating, writing my blog, working on a painting, listening to music, watching for the first time in my life the cartoon classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas and struggling not to feel sorry for myself.
I think I won. I'm sure half the callers were lying and the other half were really massaging the facts about their perfect family Christmases. People who are alone generally don't call in. We tend to feel very sad and ashamed of ourselves as though somehow it is our fault that we are alone at Christmas and that we have no one to blame but ourselves when no one calls us to invite us for dinner or breakfast or even for a cup of coffee.
I did not spend this Christmas alone. I have two friends who have recently immigrated here from Mexico and I invited them Christmas morning for brunch in my place. None of my friends ever invite me anywhere for Christmas and I thought it would be nice for my friends from Mexico to have somewhere to go. The visit went well, the food was good and later I went to work.
Working on Christmas Day, if you are otherwise alone, and if you can pull it off, can actually be a great idea. I hung out with the clients in the small psychiatric centre where I work. We went for a walk, then did art together, visited in front of the TV and had Christmas dinner together. I was given some simple gifts by management then took an amazing walk through Shaughnessy the wealthy area where I enjoyed the light displays on some of the mansions and the full moon shining gently from the east.
When I arrived home I enjoyed the silence and read the remaining pages of a library book that I returned this morning. I went to bed and slept beautifully. Today my friends from Mexico came over for tea and cookies, then we walked together to my friend's for her Boxing Day open house. My friends met a lot of new people which I hope will help enhance their experience of establishing themselves in my country and I got to chat and catch up with people I hadn't seen in ages. There were also a couple of people present who caused me a lot of hurt while I was at St. Paul's Anglican. We basically ignored each other. Both tried to greet me with phony niceness and I simply muttered hello and stayed away from them.
I do wonder about the Grinch. I in a way have trouble blaming him. I'm sure he must have had good reason for isolating himself from Whoville the way he did and I suspect that he also had a mental health disturbance: perhaps a mood disorder, or PTSD, or depression and anxiety. I know what social isolation feels like and how painful it is to be rebuffed and ignored by people that you love and how easy it is to withdraw and isolate and wind up hating.
Gentle Reader, for this season of Christmas, I hope that we can look with empathy upon the Grinches and try to understand that those who are alone and do not reach out are often the way they are for good reason. I challenge each and every one of us to try to think of someone who could remind us of the Grinch. It could even be me. Remember not to blame the victim and don't wait for us to call. Reach out to us because we are often feeling too miserable and ashamed of our afflicted condition to lift so much as a finger to help ourselves or to call friends or relatives who simply do not have time for us, don't care, or would rather not see us.
Next Christmas let's be a little less selfish and less focussed on our immediate circle and reach out to those who are alone. It could be a new Canadian. It could be a poor or homeless person. It could be me. It could even be you.
May the coming new year find us more generous, less selfish and more caring.
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