To My Friend that is Struggling with Heartbreak

To My Friend that is Struggling with Heartbreak,

I see your pain. I see the broken pieces of your heart that you are so desperately trying to mend. I see you putting up barriers so that broken heart of yours does not hurt again. I may not have gone through the same experiences you have, but I’ve felt a broken heart and I’ve built my own walls too.

 Sometimes the people in our lives that we love the most are the ones that do the most damage to our hearts. We thought we could be vulnerable around them, share with them the things that we’d never tell anyone else. Then one day they break that trust. Our heart breaks. We mend it as best we can, we put up barriers, and then another someone comes along, and the cycle repeats itself. Round and round the merry-go-round of heart break we go till we say no more. Till we are convinced that everyone that ever gets close to us will eventually hurt us, thus there is no point in being close to anyone at all. Everyone must now be kept at a safe distance because our hearts cannot take another blow.

Am I somewhere in the ball park of what you’re feeling right now?

Let me tell you something about heartbreak though, as painful and horrible as it feels, it teaches you. It either teaches you how to weed out the unhealthy people in your life and find the good, or it 

teaches you to become bitter and see everyone as an enemy. 

If the latter is what your heart break has taught you, it is one way to keep you from heart ache. Yet it also keeps you from seeing the good in people and in life.

I’ll let you in on a secret though. There’s always that one random person. That one person who wasn’t the closest friend, but who didn’t completely fall out of touch, and they don’t seem to mind that you haven’t talked in a while. They don’t mind how you’ve treated them in the past. They don’t think you’re a terrible friend. They just want to know what you’ve been up to and how you’re doing. From personal experience, I can say that those kinds of random people, they are the good ones. And you will know they are the good ones, because they don’t share the red flag qualities of the people that have hurt you. Don’t get me wrong, they’re human and may say or do something stupid that may cause you grief, but they are going to be the kind of person who will recognize their mistake as long as you tell them that it hurt you.

You may think that I’m assuming things. That’s fair. But I’ve gone the route of viewing everyone as my enemy. All I ended up with was feeling more alone, and treating people in a way that made me feel worse. It took a lot of soul searching, but I learned that there are ways to preventing yourself from getting hurt without sacrificing the good relationships you have.

My answer was cutting out the negative people in my life. Now some of those people are my own family. And since I cannot avoid family forever, I set boundaries. I gave myself permission that if I sensed that an argument, guilt fest, or any other negative thing was going to start, I was allowed to leave. I didn’t have to sit and take it. Their behavior at that point did not warrant my attention and thus I didn’t have to give it to them.

Here is my advice. Give yourself time to grieve for the relationship you lost. Give yourself permission to set boundaries so you don’t get manipulated into the negative cycle again. Most importantly, give your good friends the opportunity to really be a friend.  In time, you will heal. Until then, know that I’m here for you.

Love,

Your friend. 

I Hate Christmas

Hi I’m Daria and I hate Christmas.

Well, hate isn’t really quite the right word. Disdain… defy… dread… those probably would work better than hate. But to simplify when it comes to the three major holidays all smack dab close together from November to January, It’s easiest to say I hate Christmas.

 I didn’t hate Christmas as a kid. I mean I was always excited to help my mom decorate our tiny tree that was as big as I was and setting up the little winter wonderland landscape that my mom’s teddy bears occupied beneath it. We would listen to the forgotten carols and take tours of the lights at temple square because it was literally a block away.

However, I do remember a few things that never quite made sense. My mom didn’t like the season at all. I mean, we only put up the tree the week of Christmas at the earliest, and on Christmas Eve at the latest. Mom still tried her best, but me being the oldest child I just always knew that there was something off with mom during the holiday season.

Christmas morning was probably the best part of the year- because it was presents and parents smiling and my sisters and I getting along for a good hour. But after everything was unwrapped and my sisters and I acting like kids and playing with our new toys, the strangest thing would occur- my dad would be angry. How could my dad be angry when I gave him something I painted, glued, and put together myself just for him? How could my dad be angry when none of us showed disappointment at our gifts? We were always grateful, we remembered to say thank you. Why was he so mad?

Even as a young kid, I knew that my family and I were poor. My parents both worked two jobs for a while. Then mom stayed home. Then dad lost his job because of health issues. We moved several times. It was my grandparents who took me and my sisters school clothes shopping. It was my aunts who gave us school supplies for my birthday, which is in late August. I knew we didn’t have much and I was always so excited to see the actual brand new things that came on the day all about presents.

As a teenager, I finally got to see more and more of the reality of our situation. So I did my best to not add to the stress of pleasing me with gifts. One year all I wanted was a whiteboard and notebooks in hopes that they could spend more on my siblings. I thought that maybe if I did the decorating, so mom didn’t have to help. If I made or bought presents for everyone then maybe that year’s Christmas would be different. I’d lock myself in my room and blast Christmas music hoping that I could give fill my gifts with the magic they promised was in the year- the power of love and cheer and family time. But the outcome was always the same. Mom was off and dad would get angry after all the presents were unwrapped.

When the next signs of Christmas season were springing up in October I would cringe. I thought people were sick for even mentioning the holiday. When I went into stores in early November and they’d be playing Christmas music it would make me cringe and turn into a Grinch. At that point, Christmas felt like one big lie to me. The season of “giving” and “good will towards men” just seemed so fake and unrealistic. Wanting to celebrate it for any longer than the day itself just sounded cheap. Where was the Christ in Christmas? I didn’t see it. All I saw were bright colored lights, the need for presents, and the echo of “most wonderful time of the year” haunting me everywhere I went.

I learned in my final year of high school why my dad was always angry on Christmas- because he felt lacking. That he wished he could give us more because most of our presents came from secret Santas and family members.

As an adult, I can understand that. But as a teen I thought it was ridiculous. Couldn’t he just be happy with the fact that we even got presents and liked them? Couldn’t he just laugh with the rest of us when someone continued to designate presents for Andrea (which is the middle name of my youngest sister)? Couldn’t he just let go of his macho “I need to provide everything” pride and just see that all we really wanted was for him to relax and enjoy the day with us?

It wasn’t until this year when my mom finally told me why she didn’t like Christmas, or her birthday for that matter. To be honest, if I had been treated like she had been when she was young, I’d hate really hate Christmas and my birthday too. I don’t blame her at all for not enjoying the season. Childhood memories and pain are hard things to overcome.

For me, I still associate Christmas with an emotionally off mother and an angry dad. To this day I still can’t stand Christmas music because to me, the music of the season is what brings on the memories and the “fakeness” more than anything else- be it carols, hymns, or jingles. When my neighbors started blasting their Christmas music this year on November first, I simply blasted my dance party music. Thank you, Oingo Boingo for “Dead Man’s Party”.

I respect others and their need to celebrate a holiday that brings them joy. They have not been through my experiences. Lucky for me, I can hide their facebook posts about trees, Santa, elf on the shelf, and other Christmas paraphernalia. Lucky for me, I’m in a home of my own with a husband who understands why I feel the way I do about Christmas. He totally supports me and my strange ideas about how I want to celebrate it as a family, especially with our little one who is due in January.  

So in the end… do I hate Christmas, celebrating the day of Christ’s birth? No. Because I’m a Christian and his birth is an important part of his role in my life.

I hate the American Christmas culture- that’s where I’m the Grinch, the Scrooge, the full on hater. Let all the lights, gift wrap, and song medleys flee far from me! I am a woman who would like to simply enjoy December for what it is, a month of snow that makes the mountains look pretty, a time to snuggle with my warm hubby and enjoy hot chocolate, and the wonderful peace of mind knowing that the school semester is almost over.

So if I’m the off one during the season, that’s why. It’s my own childhood problem to work through and nothing more. I didn’t write this to receive pity or apologies. I wrote this in order for me to really identify why I feel the way I feel, to come to terms with my view of such an important holiday within my life.  This is my chance to find clarity so I can find joy in the years to come, instead of letting it me grow bitterer every year and eventually becoming the female Scrooge. That would be an interesting story though… now I’ve got a short story idea too. Hey look, something positive already.