What I Learned this Christmas
Well, I did it. Christmas has come and gone. This was the hardest Christmas. I have been emotionally preparing for it all month. I knew it was not going to be easy, but it was very hard.
I had a great Christmas with Aly and her family. I was so grateful to feel like a true part of her family. There were laughs, movies, matching pajamas, good food. There were mixed emotions, but ultimately, I wouldn’t have wanted to spend Christmas any other way. Emotions hit me at the dinner table after a phone call with a family member. I wish I had stuck to my plan and kept my phone off. I returned to the table and could not hide my tears. I had to excuse myself twice. I did not eat as much as I would have liked to. Everyone looked sympathetic toward me, and I know they were being caring, but I was embarrassed.
Today, the day after Christmas, I feel guilty. I woke up with self-hatred. I did not do anything wrong by talking to this family member, but I gave them the power, again, to upset me. I can’t change anything. I can’t go back. Sometimes I have to make choices more than once until I really decide enough is enough. Sometimes I have to be disappointed enough times before I truly believe things won’t change. Sometimes feeling better about myself for being kind, is just not worth the hurt I will receive from them. I feel like a bad person if I don’t engage, and I feel disappointed for letting myself down if I do engage.
What I can feel proud of is that I succeeded in doing the absolute hardest part of the holiday season: not attending any of my family’s Christmas events.
I need to focus on the strength that came from setting that boundary and sticking to that boundary. There were so many days and weeks of guilt and sorrow. I had a healthy, happy, Christmas with my girlfriend and her family. I feel hopeful for the Christmas’s to come. This wasn’t nothing. I did it.
I have done so much grieving, and so much reflecting.
What I have learned:
I do not have to do anything that makes me even a bit uncomfortable during the holidays.
I do not have to surround myself with people who are “neutral” when it comes to my abuser. There is no such thing as neutral in this case. Neutrality supports the abuser, not the one suffering.
I used to think that chosen family was not as meaningful as “real” family. This isn’t true. We can’t choose our family. We may surround ourselves with people who we don’t feel we fit in with. We may feel obligated to have relationships with people we likely wouldn’t choose if they were strangers. Chosen family is quite literally people you “choose" and that is what makes them most meaningful.
People will have reactions to my boundaries, but it does not mean I am a bad person.
People choose to feel how they feel, and even if my choices make them sad it does not mean it is the wrong thing for me to do.
What I am gaining from certain relationships is not worth what they are costing me.
If I break my boundaries to please others, I am still compromising a vital part of myself.
I am not trying to hurt anyone. I am trying to take care of myself.
There is a difference between feeling guilty, as in I’m doing something wrong VS. this is a really difficult decision and I’m sad I have to make it, but it is the right one for me.
To cut contact does not mean I am losing everything, it’s that I am losing the possibility of everything.
All I have known is to please others, as if nobody is responsible for their own feelings. I am not responsible for anyone’s feelings but my own.
It is time I write about something new. A new year is coming. This is not to say that the same challenge will not be affecting me anymore. I am sure there will be days where this is exactly what I want to write about. Right now, I need to apply everything that I have been reminding myself of. My challenge for right now is not so much navigating estrangement, but more about re-discovering myself. I have been struggling with dissociation, but more than I ever have before. I feel like I lost a big part of myself, and it has been scaring me. I don’t see the world the same way. Through my eyes, everything is foggy. I do not recognize my reflection in the mirror. I keep shutting down. I can’t speak, can’t move, and it feels like something bad is going to happen. I stop trusting myself. I am coming to understand that I must not feel like myself because I recognize on some level that someone new is emerging. This “someone new” has parts of myself but is also someone entirely different. This feels scary right now because it is unfamiliar. It is unknown. I do not know who is going to come out, and what she’s going to be like.
It is scary doing something that you have never done before. What I am doing, is so hard, and so different from what I have always known. I am changing in the process. Like a snake, I am shedding my skin. I am just hoping that with the changes and choices I am making, I will be prouder of this new me. I will be getting to know her, as everyone else is.