Christmas seems to always leave me feeling empty. Like there’s a cold wind blowing through my soul. It makes the world feel so much bigger than I usually perceive it. It makes every human connection I have feel superficial.
I have always felt this way, for as long as I can remember. From Christmas afternoon through to some time in February I feel this way. But mostly on Christmas night. And New Year’s Eve if I haven’t managed to find something to do like work.
Alcohol doesn’t make it better, the feeling is exactly the same no matter how much I drink. It’s physical and mental and like a cold hand is wrapped around my heart.
This year I have scrolled through social media so many times, each day revealing more and more of my family and old friends who are getting married and having children and taking on the roles our parents did when we were small. They have family get togethers with children running around and every year I feel more distant.
Every year I feel less connected, every year I feel like I belong less. Like I don’t know my family, like I don’t fit in the place they’ve left for me.
I look at my cousins, at old friends, my parents friends, all these family celebrations that I will never feel a part of. I’ve felt this disconnect and drift since I was around 9. There was no major event to trigger it. No trauma. My brain just started really struggling to make genuine connections. Maybe it’s always been like this and I only started noticing then?
I can’t make eye contact or easy conversation with someone unless I know them well, trust them, and there’s barely anyone else around. I don’t know how to participate in table talk, having banter with an entire table bouncing back and forward off each other with no obvious pattern. I never know when I’m allowed to talk.
I don’t feel comfortable in those family gatherings. I don’t feel comfortable having relatives I barely know scrutinizing my life. Discussing my grades, my jobs, my endless student life as if I weren’t there. I can’t stand when people ask such invasive questions and think it’s ok, it’s just small talk and they’re family. I feel like I’m suffocating and I can’t breathe and my head starts spinning and I just want to scream.
Christmas is one of those times of year when I realize how vastly different I am. And I always feel so alienated and alone. And I’ve never known how to explain this before. I’ve tried to tell people I feel empty and usually they try to force me to interact with family more or shrug off my feelings of foreboding and nightmares and physical nausea. Or tell me I’ve just got the holiday blues. But now I know what’s wrong.
This is my first Christmas knowing that I am Autistic and adhd. It doesn’t make this any easier at all. I still feel exactly the same feelings and still just want to disappear and sleep without waking. But I guess at least now I know why?
Christmas is really lonely. The loneliest period in my calendar. How do you explain to your loved ones that you’re drowning in loneliness and internal isolation but that being surrounded by friends and family makes it worse? Does it even make sense to normal people? Fingers crossed one day I’ll figure out how to turn 6 weeks of emptiness into something better one day.
