This Season

The holidays are a really tough time for me each year. I'm rarely with family, and I tend to feel very lonely. I'm 42 years old and single, and I've moved around a bit, so it seems over the years that I end up either being alone at the holidays or responding to very kind invites and being with people I don't know very much and feeling depressed about that. It's kind of a no-win situation: if I am invited to be with others, I feel awkward and like they're wondering why I don't have my own family, and if I'm not invited to be with anyone, I feel sad about people going about their business and there not being room for people without families or partners/spouses. This holiday season there is the extra bonus of being extremely worried about money and my job, and it being the first holiday since my dad died.

I didn't get a tree last year because I just moved into my condo in the middle of November. It was an easy decision. This year, it's harder to justify not doing it, but it can be depressing to have a tree and a decorated house if you're the only one there to see it. I really loved the year that I still lived at my apartment and I had my kitty and Huntington Beach came up in early December and we got a tree and decorated it together. (He helped me do the lights, actually, but he just watched me do the ornaments. He said he could tell I had a specific way I wanted to do them. That wasn't even true but I didn't mind.) I joked that it was the only year in my adult life that my tree has stood straight up in the tree stand.

I am trying to not get bitter about difficult times in life, and I know that my vision is kind of colored with depression so I'm not able to see completely clearly right now.