December Days 2022 #25: Festive
Dec. 25th, 2022 10:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradept[What's December Days this year? Taking a crowdsourced list of adjectives and seeing if I can turn them into saying good things about myself. Or at least good things to talk about.]
This is a slightly misleading adjective, chosen specifically for today, as for most people, it's Christmas Day (or has been.) And "festive" is not usually the adjective that I use to describe how I've felt about holidays and celebrations when they involve me. Involving others, in fine, and I can be bright and cheery and otherwise positive.
Festivity through childhood was fine, and through university as well, mostly because there wasn't an expectation to do much than be there and be myself. Since my birthday is during the summer vacation for required and university schooling, I never had any sort of "today is my birthday!" celebration at school, but instead was combined with all the other summer birthdays into a single celebration. And because my birthday is during said summer break, I also didn't really put much effort into trying to gather a group of friends to celebrate, since it is highly likely they wouldn't be around, anyway. The year-end festivals of Costume Day, Harvest Day, and the VEWPRF (the Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festival, Christmas when I was growing up) were usually celebrated with family when it was easy to get to where family was gathering, and that was enough.
With my ex, festivals and gift-giving were an opportunity to see people and be happy, and I was able to successfully stuff the anxiety about the cost of the gifts far enough away to at least put on a brave face about it. Because of my ex, it was my ex's friends that we went to see for celebrations and festivals. They are perfectly fine people, but I wasn't really nurturing my own friendships (and my ex wanted to insert herself into them anyway, and by that point, my friends didn't really want to have my ex along, so…)
It's been a process of recovery, and I'm not finished with that, but there have been encouraging signs that festiveness might finally be coming back to me. I'm able to appreciate the displays of lights around once again, and I don't have an active hostility to hanging up the decorations around the house. (That's not to say I'm getting enjoyment or had anticipation about doing so, just that it's moved from "blargh" to "meh.") I appreciate that I don't have the additional anxiety of having to do performative gestures of affection for my ex (and receive them) with hearts and stuffed animals and cutesy messages from my fur babies to their parents, and having to come up with it without asking. (There's a reason that my calendar has things in it like anniversary dates as reminders, because while I might want to remember them, I usually need a reminder with enough time to plan or find something in advance.) It may still be a few years before the holidays become festivals again, before it is possible for me to partake again of the gift giving part without worry and anxiety, before I start looking forward to decorating. Before the magic comes back, as it were.
I was recently informed that my systems of calibration on important things like "are you suffering from severe anxiety?" are more akin to the person who has their own pain scale that starts at "ow, this hurts, but no more than usual" and goes through "nope, not getting out of bed today because my body is only able to understand pain." My sense of the festive may be similarly misaligned, trying to get back to things not hurting more than usual, rather than toward joy and participation because it is joyful to engage in such things. It's the thing where I will genuinely participate and be happy and all of those things, and then the brainweasels will get their say after it's all done about FOMO, about the lost time that could have been spent in better company, about the lost time that could have been spent building a bigger network of people in the locality as friends, about the remaining time left on the consequences of the bad decisions. It's a system calibrated toward shame, which is the thing my professionals have been pointing out as both pervasive in society and a really shit motivator for most people who want to change or learn from their actions and the consequences.
So, from the place of joy and happiness, I wish you all the very best for the remainder of this year, the length of this festive season, and it is my sincere hope that next year turns out better for all of us than this year did
- festive (comparative more festive, superlative most festive)
- Having the atmosphere, decoration, or attitude of a festival, holiday, or celebration.
- In the mood to celebrate.
This is a slightly misleading adjective, chosen specifically for today, as for most people, it's Christmas Day (or has been.) And "festive" is not usually the adjective that I use to describe how I've felt about holidays and celebrations when they involve me. Involving others, in fine, and I can be bright and cheery and otherwise positive.
Festivity through childhood was fine, and through university as well, mostly because there wasn't an expectation to do much than be there and be myself. Since my birthday is during the summer vacation for required and university schooling, I never had any sort of "today is my birthday!" celebration at school, but instead was combined with all the other summer birthdays into a single celebration. And because my birthday is during said summer break, I also didn't really put much effort into trying to gather a group of friends to celebrate, since it is highly likely they wouldn't be around, anyway. The year-end festivals of Costume Day, Harvest Day, and the VEWPRF (the Vague Early Winter Possibly Religious Festival, Christmas when I was growing up) were usually celebrated with family when it was easy to get to where family was gathering, and that was enough.
With my ex, festivals and gift-giving were an opportunity to see people and be happy, and I was able to successfully stuff the anxiety about the cost of the gifts far enough away to at least put on a brave face about it. Because of my ex, it was my ex's friends that we went to see for celebrations and festivals. They are perfectly fine people, but I wasn't really nurturing my own friendships (and my ex wanted to insert herself into them anyway, and by that point, my friends didn't really want to have my ex along, so…)
It's been a process of recovery, and I'm not finished with that, but there have been encouraging signs that festiveness might finally be coming back to me. I'm able to appreciate the displays of lights around once again, and I don't have an active hostility to hanging up the decorations around the house. (That's not to say I'm getting enjoyment or had anticipation about doing so, just that it's moved from "blargh" to "meh.") I appreciate that I don't have the additional anxiety of having to do performative gestures of affection for my ex (and receive them) with hearts and stuffed animals and cutesy messages from my fur babies to their parents, and having to come up with it without asking. (There's a reason that my calendar has things in it like anniversary dates as reminders, because while I might want to remember them, I usually need a reminder with enough time to plan or find something in advance.) It may still be a few years before the holidays become festivals again, before it is possible for me to partake again of the gift giving part without worry and anxiety, before I start looking forward to decorating. Before the magic comes back, as it were.
I was recently informed that my systems of calibration on important things like "are you suffering from severe anxiety?" are more akin to the person who has their own pain scale that starts at "ow, this hurts, but no more than usual" and goes through "nope, not getting out of bed today because my body is only able to understand pain." My sense of the festive may be similarly misaligned, trying to get back to things not hurting more than usual, rather than toward joy and participation because it is joyful to engage in such things. It's the thing where I will genuinely participate and be happy and all of those things, and then the brainweasels will get their say after it's all done about FOMO, about the lost time that could have been spent in better company, about the lost time that could have been spent building a bigger network of people in the locality as friends, about the remaining time left on the consequences of the bad decisions. It's a system calibrated toward shame, which is the thing my professionals have been pointing out as both pervasive in society and a really shit motivator for most people who want to change or learn from their actions and the consequences.
So, from the place of joy and happiness, I wish you all the very best for the remainder of this year, the length of this festive season, and it is my sincere hope that next year turns out better for all of us than this year did
