This Holiday Season- Alone and loving it!

over 12 years ago
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Siobhan Darroch (siobhandarroch)

67 posts

This Holiday Season- Alone and Loving It!

Dear Siobhan, Here it is, another holiday season, and I’m alone. I’m dreading facing company Christmas parties, family get-togethers and reunions with friends. I don’t want people to whisper about how I’m still alone, to ask why I’m alone, or to make that odd statement of “don’t worry, you’ll find someone.” I am also sad and hurt. Others find love and have someone to share the holidays with, why do I have to be alone? What’s wrong with me?

-Scrooged & Alone

Dear Scrooged & Alone,

In short order, nothing is wrong with you. The holidays can be hard for us all. They can seem even harder when we’re alone. Hallmark commercials, LifeTime movies, and even family and friends, all seem to be constant and loud voices in our ears, “you still haven’t found someone?” Since birth, it seems as if society screams at us that we can’t be happy during the holidays if we’re single. Sometimes, it feels like everything and everyone around us is deliberately (and with great pleasure) mocking us. Smile, laugh, and nod your head in agreement along with me as we look at the reasons to be joyful about being single this holiday season.

Relationships, no matter how perfect and great, are never how we envision them. Society has misled us through kitschy movies (think Breakfast at Tiffany’s and every Disney princess movie), even in sappy, tear-inducing commercials. For the reality of relationships, consider that even the best relationships likely appear outwardly more like The Walton’s than they are. Relationships are lot of work, especially at the holidays. Even people already dating, engaged or married feel pressure and sense the dreaded judgmental glares (yep, those piercing glares aren’t just for the single). The list of shortcomings the “already hitched” feel is long. They feel judged for: not yet having children; not having enough children; having too many children; not raising their children in the” right way”; for working too much or not enough; for lacking the material status their family thinks they should; for having so much it causes familial jealousy; the list is endless. No matter who you’re with or not with, or what you achieve in life, there will always be those who try to steal your happiness and joy and destroy your self-worth.

Speaking of people trying to steal your happiness and joy, they can’t; you have sole ownership of them. No one can take them away and conversely, no one can gift them to you. Joy, happiness, and self-worth won’t ever come from being in a relationship; they are not attached part and parcel. A good relationship can enhance joy and happiness and can certainly help you remember self-worth long ignored, but it won’t give you these things. Even a great relationship will fail if you are not already joyous, happy, and self-validating when single. The reason why it won’t work with those things lacking? The other person can see and feel the lack of these needed character qualities and the (often unstated) subsequent expectation of them to provide and maintain them. It is not anyone else’s job to gift us these; no one can. They also do not have the power to take them away. Happiness, joy, and self-worth have to come from within; from realizing, believing and fully accepting your self-worth and your rights to be happy and joyful. You deserve happiness, joy, and to affirm your self-worth! (Repeat this affirmation until you believe it!)

To close out on a humorous note, being unattached means you can deck out your tree any way you please. So strip the store shelves bare of zebra striped bows, drag out all of your lilac ornaments with fuschia and lime polka dots, and start decorating your 15ft tree with 225,000 mini sparkling lights. (Or perhaps, you’d prefer no tree at all, that’s fine too.) When you’re alone, there’s no pretending to love extended visits with in-laws while looking at your watch the entire time, feeling like a few hours has morphed into an eternity. No feigning surprise or delight at the ‘so-not-you’ gift your significant other “stumbled across” while dashing through a store on Christmas Eve. Oh, and perhaps best of all, no child-like sighs, feet stamping, and whines when you want to go to every designer clothing store because they feel being in those stores is a fate worse than a 1,000 deaths (or home improvement store, depending on your cup of tea).

So, if you find yourself alone this holiday season, put on your comfy jammies, big fluffy slippers and snuggle up with a nice glass of wine and box of holiday fudge. Turn on a marathon of your favorite shows or perhaps some Christmas classics. Then take a deep, refreshing breath at all you don’t have to deal with this holiday season.

Until we meet again,Siobhan

over 12 years ago
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pagirl31

11 posts

Sounds like a great idea!!! Put comfy sweats on instead of dressing up curl up in my fav oversize chair and watch my DVD collection of Sex in the City chic flicks with lots of laughs and cries and a container of my fav Ben and Jerrys ice cream. Hope everyone enjoys their holidays either alone or with someone!!!

over 12 years ago
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LADY CEE (ladycee)

59 posts

I love it Siobhan, you couldn’t have said it any better

over 12 years ago
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Healing with Joy (thewizardstar)

2 posts

I really enjoyed this, you can sure write good for you. I had to smile when it came to the part about having to pretend you loved the visitors .. you really painted up a great tree .. zebra … striped bows .. this was excellent :))