Learning not to depend

We inter­rupt these Christ­mas stor­ies for a sud­den dose of harsh real­ity. It’s dis­tinctly unfest­ive, so apo­lo­gies in advance.

For me, one of the most dif­fi­cult things about Christ­mas is the whole concept of it being a fam­ily event. From early Novem­ber, the idea of the con­ven­tional fam­ily unit is mer­ci­lessly shoved down our throats by advert­isers, by tra­di­tion, and in just about every con­ver­sa­tion any­one ever has about the fest­ive sea­son. For reas­ons too numer­ous and def­in­itely too emo­tion­ally and his­tor­ic­ally com­plex to go into here — although rest assured, I’m talk­ing about issues that are far more ser­i­ous than just get­ting annoyed with Grandma for con­stantly want­ing to play Mono­poly on Christ­mas Day — I can’t cope with it. Sorry.

Last night, I uttered five words, got up from my place at the table and left the res­taur­ant without look­ing back. I walked out on a fam­ily event — pos­sibly the largest gath­er­ing of vari­ous rel­at­ives that has taken place in the past few years. Was that heart­less? Prob­ably. Do I feel guilty? Yes. But I had to do it, just to avoid being hurt again.

In recent months, I’ve been try­ing to teach myself not to care so much. But it’s dif­fi­cult. You’re sup­posed to care because they’re your blood ties, they’re your fam­ily, they rep­res­ent you and you rep­res­ent them. Those are the rules.

I’m con­fused, so to pre­serve a sense of emo­tional equi­lib­rium I keep telling myself that if I see just one more soft-focus advert­ise­ment of a fam­ily unwrap­ping presents around a roar­ing log fire, I will scream.

Except I won’t, of course. The simple fact is that I’m a diehard romantic, and I dream in soft-focus just as much as the next per­son stand­ing in the cold bus queue.

Thank heav­ens it’s Sunday after­noon and no one’s read­ing this, yet how annoy­ing that I don’t seem to be able to turn off the com­ments func­tion for this entry. Accuse me of being unseasonal at your peril.