Holiday Support

[user 176211]

Sometimes the best support you can give people during the holidays is to simply leave them alone. You know the person- at your job or your school or neighborhood or wherever in your life that everyone seems to want to find a place to go for the holidays. Its a really beautiful gesture and no one is doing it to make anyone's life suck. But please keep in mind that the holidays really don´t mean much to EVERYONE.

I will use myself as an example: I am that person at work where everyone just quietly mutters to each other ¨I am going to invite him over for Thanksgiving¨.. the purpose obviously being that I might not feel too good with myself if I dont have a family, or am married or have kids etc. And those people truly are great for thinking of others. But also try to keep in mind that some people WANT to be left alone for the holidays.

I, for one, wish that I could spend the day alone. I wish this because for people like me, there is a very heavy price for feigning a smile all day long. Either I spend today alone, or I got to whatever engagement today and spend the entire next week screening my calls and hiding out to recover from a social situation I don´t want to be in.
Sometimes people accept these offers out of politeness or sense of obligation.

But sincerely, days like this mean absolutely nothing to me. When I was a kid and my siblings were still around and my parents were young and healthy, they´d spend the holidays fighting over things that they couldn´t remember if you paid them a million dollars to. Their ego was so important that we´d spend Thanksgiving and Christmas quiet in a house with fuse trigger for a fight if someone even looked at the next person wrong.
That kind of stuff carries over into adult and manifests itself in different ways. I don´t wanna fight during the holidays, but I want to be alone and not see anyone's face. I don´t have anything to smile about. I don´t have anything to laugh about. I don´t want to cook. I don´t want to eat. I don´t want to talk.

So keep in mind that if someone gives a polite ¨no¨ to a holiday invite, please take that answer and keep it moving. Everyone will be happier. And a seemingly loving action doesn´t have to secretly be torture for someone who´s known a completely different life.