Holiday Relief in a Bottle

When my parents got divorced I had to choose my holidays, who gets Thanksgiving? How do I split Christmas?  That impending stressful anxiety flowed into my first marriage because now I had three families to deal with (yes ‘deal’ with and one was less understanding than the others).  We always had to make someone happy while one was unhappy.  Anyway, now that I do not have three families to choose from,  I no longer have that anxiety.  And yes, as many of you will admit, it is anxiety, and you will agree you’ve all said ‘I hate the holidays’.  What is it we all ‘hate’ about the holidays?

Coming from experience (and only those who have gone through this have a right to judge so save the psycho-babble) I traveled miles between Thanksgiving and Christmas up and down the GSP for most of my adult driving life and the day that I woke up and realized I could do what I wanted was the relief you feel after downing a whole bottle of Pepto Bismol.  Ahhh!  I went to happy hour the eve of, I slept in the day of, I didn’t have to be at someone else’s house on Christmas morning (every year) to watch their kids open gifts while mine waited till I got home (yes I still have a little baggage).   Now it’s life as a slice of my favorite chocolate cake.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking the whole ‘spend time with family’ scenario because I do spend time with family, it’s just on my terms now.  So if I choose to ask the man in my life to Thanksgiving dinner, I do not want the unnecessary assumptions that I’m going to marry this one and please save the interrogations  “Is he coming for Christmas?”.  Again, stressful holiday – does not apply anymore.  As adults we should not feel pressured by our family because society makes it out to be such a life changing event if you bring someone home for a holiday dinner.  Again, there’s that unwanted stress, the whispers of rings and babies, and whispers when you’re at their house for a holiday about you, because you are not at your families’ dinner table. 

This is how I feel in a nutshell, I’m not going to schlep around the man in my life just to appease the family at the holidays.  In some ways some families forget that the other person in that relationship has a family too.  So next time you question why so and so is not at the dinner table, just remember he or she is spending precious time with their family, just like you are with yours.