This Zombie Wears Bright Pink Dresses

It’s Sunday morning. Richard’s alarm is going off for probably the third time, but dang it! I couldn’t fall asleep until 3:00 am. Just five more minutes…

“Come on Dasha. It’s time to get up. Church starts in an hour.”

I dread those words.  Both the waking up, and that I should be going to church.

“Five more minutes,” I grumble to my hubby as I try to drift back to sleep. But Corbin is now fussing. Hubby shifts to get him and now I am awake, but I refuse to open my eyes.

I don’t want to go to church. I would much rather stay in bed and sleep. Come on, Daria, you know you should get up and dressed.

But even I have a hard time convince myself to go. I will admit it, I hate going to church.

Putting on real clothes is hard enough, and even then, I only do it so don’t scandalize the neighbors when I water my plants or check my mail. I need to pick out a dress, one that will allow me to be in any number of awkward positions while I take care of my son and all his squirmy needs. I also should probably do something with my hair, mostly so my son doesn’t rip it out in chunks with his superhuman baby strength. There’s no time to do my makeup though, so I just get to go looking like a zombie in a bright pink dress because I’m still super tired.

We sit in the foyer so Corbin can roll around on the floor and because we’re late, as usual. The talks given are all about something positive like loving others, but most of their stories are already ones I’ve heard before from similar talks or repeated from general conference.

Sunday school comes. Corbin’s asleep. Yay! Oh, we’re all taking turns reading a verse in the most boring monotone voice possible, and when questions are answered all I hear is, “when I was on my mission.” Oh… well I never served a mission. Guess I will never know what “insert topic of discussion” feels like. My sarcastic inner dialogue becomes more sinister.

Then comes my least favorite part: Relief society. This makes me sad as much as it makes me uncomfortable. I should feel comfortable and at ease. But I don’t have many friends in my ward. Not many, if any, of the women here know who I am, since I was so sick during my pregnancy, and I’ve had such a hard time coming to church since Corbin was born. So I just sit alone in the back, thankful that Corbin is asleep on the floor as an excuse for me not to move.

I have a really hard time with the personal stories and ideas shared. Somehow even though I know these people are real, with real struggles and expectations, I can’t help but feel like everything is fake. Everything at church just feels like a fairyland.

Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in the doctrine, but I have a harder time with the people. People are flawed, as one of my favorite general authorities once said “Imperfect people are all that God has to work with.” I definitely know I am one of those imperfect people.

But it’s still doesn’t change that church is hard. Cause for me, church meant a place of renewal and a reminder that God loves me. However it has since lost that feeling. Doesn’t mean the doctrine’s changed. It just means that I have changed.

See, church is now an added stressor to my social anxiety. It’s no longer refuge, but a stage for which my parenting skills are displayed and my ability to act human is observed. Is that true? Probably not, but my panicking brain doesn’t know that. All it knows how to do is panic.

At the simplest level, I have a hard time going to church because I have a hard time believing that God loves me. It’s selfish, and childish. But that doesn’t make the feeling go away. It doesn’t make the fear that everything that makes me feel like I can cope with this messed up life of mine will be ripped away. And that fear makes me angry.

Angry enough that I’d rather deal with disappointment from my husband than face something that just feels like eyes watching me, where my sarcasm is sometimes the only thing keeping me from shouting at everyone to stop pretending that they are perfect for one freaking minute. So here I am, ranting and letting the world read this.

It’s a complicated feeling to believe in something while hating it at the same time. It’s not anyone’s fault that I feel this way. It’s how I’m seeing the world right now. Hopefully I can learn to let go of my anger and my fear. Hopefully I can find peace in enjoying the good things while I have them. Until then, I’m going to simply do my best, even if I do look like a zombie in a bright pink dress.

Don't Explain My Depression Away

My emotions are aching.

I know I recently talked about how I’ve been coping with depression. I’ve talked about how I noticed the first signs of it. Heck I’ve even admitted that I wanted to take my own life, and the life of my husband and son. And I still feel that the people who do not live with depression still refuse to try to understand.

It is true that I am not Depression itself. It is something that I battle with. I honestly don’t know when it will go away, or even if it ever will. There are days I hate taking a pill that has the capability to take me out of my dark and dreary mind and put everything back into a healthy perspective.

But for someone to but a blanket statement saying I’m not depressed, saying that the demons I face, the anxiety I experience are but passing moments- makes me feel that they don’t understand the gravity of the Hell that I go through.

There is sadness in this world. There is grieving.  And if you feel those emotions, they are real. They are important to you because they show the pain you feel. And true those times are still temporary. But moving on from those feelings is a personal process that happens in their own time. To tell them that they aren’t depressed is belittling their time of grief and pain no matter how temporary the pain might be.

This is one of the reasons why people don’t talk about their depression, because of people who belittle and philosophize away the reality of their Hell. Only the uneducated try to explain away depression. Until they feel it or attempt to understand, they will never know that the pain we feel is real even if they can’t see the cause.

So here I am, talking about my depression anyway because I want to bridge the gap of understanding.

My post partum depression didn’t come because I didn’t feel an overwhelming love for my son the first time I saw him. It didn’t come because I didn’t exercise enough, eat enough, or pray enough. It didn’t come because I committed some sin that I haven’t repented of. It didn’t come because I wanted to be like everyone else and be “depressed” too. It didn’t come because I struggle with the responsibilities of being a mom.

No.

I struggle with it because there’s a history of it in my family and other factors that have nothing to do with my worth as a person or my actions.

I knew it was a possibility, but I thought it wouldn’t happen to me until after I had several children. But lucky me, I got it with number one. My pregnancy was rough and awful. Labor was hard because I felt so tired and alone and I just wanted to get him out so I could finally get some sleep.

For the longest time during the months I wasn’t on medication and at the mercy of the demons of my mind, I believed that I would only get any real sleep if I was dead.

Television, games, even my favorite hobbies all felt like filler- just something to do while I waited for my son to finally take a nap, or wait for my husband to get home. There was no joy in them. I even thought about taking everything in my storage room and just throwing it away. Books, pictures, letters, gifts from grandparent’s who have passed on, craft supplies- just throw it all away because it wasn’t important anymore.

I didn’t eat. Partly because I simply forgot, and partly because I didn’t see a reason to eat because I just started feeling like a waste of space.

I was terrified of school work because I was behind and I didn’t want to be the new mom failure.

I didn’t feel human anymore. I was just a slave to my son’s needs. His were more important because he couldn’t fend for himself. He was my responsibility because I chose to get pregnant, chose to have him, and now for the rest of my life I would have to face those consequences.

I was terrified that my husband was going to leave me when he realized how terrible of a mother I felt I was and the awful reality of being a parent. Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed him. I begged him not to leave me almost every day.

I wished for the ground to swallow me up so I didn’t have to face the human world when I no longer felt human. I wanted to run away and leave everything behind because there was a chance I could have found happiness again. I wanted to drive off a cliff and take my husband and son with me so nobody would have to take over my “responsibility” anymore.

I felt like that for 3 months.

Now that I’m medicated and in therapy,I still want to run away, but not nearly as often. I still struggle with eating and sleeping.I still go into fight or flight response when my son is inconsolable and I just want the screaming to stop. I still have days where I just can’t handle people or crowds because my anxiety is still very real and I worry about what they think about me and my job as a mom.

But I can think more clearly and take time to work through my feelings instead of being consumed by them.

This is my reality. It’s not pretty or poetic but I’ll share it anyway. Because today I felt like a friend was explaining away other people’s depression. Rather than hash and bash that they are terrible, I wanted to educate. Maybe my story helps, and maybe it doesn’t. Either way my Hell is real and understanding that is all that matters.

I've Survived for 3 Months

It’s been almost three months since I was diagnosed with Post Partum Depression.

It doesn’t seem like a long time but when your mind is constantly fighting against you it can feel like an eternity.

I still struggle with negative feelings towards my son and motherhood. There are days I can’t bear to hear my son scream, so I blast my happy music with my headphones on. There are days when all I want to do is get one little thing done, like put away a load of laundry, and it takes me all day because I have to take so many breaks to take care of my son.  I really don’t like being me on those days. Those are the days that I want to run away and never come back.

However, I’ve found the things that make each day better. Sometimes for weeks at I time I feel like I’m functioning, and not just surviving.

I’ve made a small list of things to do every day. Like water my plants, vacuum, read my scriptures, and check the mail. And then every day of the week has something unique that I’m supposed to do as well. Monday is mending, Tuesday is laundry, Wednesday is baking, Thursday is reading, Friday is crafting, Saturday is deep cleaning, and Sunday is whatever makes me happy day. And you know what? It’s working. There’s a variety to my day to day life with things that make me happy or make me feel productive. I’ve also been working on my craft blog and trying to make things to display for my craft business.  

What else is wonderful about feeling just a little bit more human is that I can see my son as a person rather than the cause of all my problems. I see how much he loves people, how curious he is and how calm he can be as he takes new things in. I’m not worried about him feeling neglected by me when he’s being babysat. I honestly think that he will flourish in daycare and preschool because of his social nature.  Knowing that my son is happy among strangers makes me feel awesome about returning to school and following my dreams to be a teacher.

So life is life. There are good days, bad days, and some days that start out one and end the other. But the most important thing to know is that I’m doing okay. And when I’m not okay, I have the best friends and family that take time out their busy lives to call me, to post a thoughtful message or a funny picture, or to give me a break from my screaming son.

I’m just glad that I’ve kept my promise to myself that I made a year ago- that I would let people know the truth about how I was doing. So far it’s kept me alive and for that I am grateful. 

Too Honest for Comfort

When I brought Corbin home I was sore, tired, and bleeding- the same as every other mom. My husband did his best to stay home and considering his two jobs and classes he has- he was around a lot. I had a wonderful sister who stayed and took the night watch over my newborn. The days were long, and almost dreamlike where I rarely knew what day it was, let alone what time it was, and I did nothing more than watch television and play Sudoku while I fed and held my little son.

I got sleep. I got food. I knew how to calm and care for my son. For a time, as crazy and as strange everything felt, I felt like me still.

Then my sister had to go back home to her life and it was me, hubby, and Corbin. I got some sleep. I got some food. I even went to my own classes by then end of that week. Life as a little more hectic, but I was managing… at least that’s what I wanted to believe.

My “moments of motherhood” post describe pretty well the first signs of my own personal demons. I knew that Post-Partum Depression was a possibility. I’ve seen the physical and familial effects it can do to a family and individual- though I still had no real idea what the emotional and mental effects could entail.

I thought that because I loved school so much, that it would provide a little stability to my now flipped inside out life. I mean, school would provide an hour of adult conversation and really using my brain. It would give me time to get some exercise to walk to and from class. It would give me something to do at home that would make me feel productive. And for a while, I kept up. I may have missed class because my son wouldn’t sleep till 5:00 AM and I slept through my alarm, but I stayed up to date on what we were doing in class. I refused to let myself get behind. I’d wait till an opportune quiet, hand free moment to do my school work only to have what felt like the fussiest baby in existence. So I’d wait till the next nap… and then the next one.

Screaming was the soundtrack to my life. My chest hurt from his insistence to eat every hour.  I barely had time to take care of him… let alone myself.

There I was trying to maintain control… while my house got dirtier, television grew boring, and waking up became less and less appealing.

I’ve come to learn that you don’t go to sleep and wake up the next day depressed. It creeps up on you, like ivy on the side of house.

Another day started like it always did, but this time I knew that something was not right.

Corbin screamed just like he always did, I lay in bed hoping that hubby would take his turn, after all, I had let him sleep all night without feeding or changing Corbin, surely he could at least get his son. We lay there for probably only ten minutes, but it felt like an hour of just endless screaming. I lost the battle of wits. I picked up my son and crawled back in bed to feed him with my very sore chest. Hubby attempted to do his usual morning cuddle and I pushed him away as fast as I could. I even remember telling him in a cold dark voice “don’t you dare touch me.” I sat there, huddling on the edge of my bed, feeling like my body was just a tool for someone else.  

Usually my next thought would be “I want to hide” but that day the thought was “I want to end.” I was scared. Not just because I thought it, but because how valid it felt. The floodgate for the demons had been opened. Demons (the negative thoughts as I call them) were telling me that my husband was going to leave now that I was broken. He would be better off without me anyway since I was lazy and was a terrible wife and mother.

We did talk though, and I told him everything. I told him why I was mad that morning and I admitted to him the demons that had been plaguing me that day. But I didn’t think that I was depressed. That was just a bad day. Everyone has bad days. And for the next few days I felt a little better, my son even slept a little more, and I felt a little bit productive.

Another thing I’ve learned about depression. Not every day is soul sucking torment.

However, the bad days are more frequent and the things that I enjoyed now cause me panic attacks or seem meaningless. I know I need help. I do. But I feel stuck. When it feels like I need to quit school, but my demons tell me I’m a failure for not sticking to it. When I feel like I need to see a medical professional, but the demons say it’s pointless because insurance ends soon and finances are tight as it is. When I feel stir crazy for being stuck in my house for a week, the demons tell me there isn’t anything to do outside anyway. When I feel lonely and want a friend, the demons tell me that if I tell them everything that’s going on that they will never be my friend anymore, or worse, I’ll make them depressed. I know these demons weave a web of lies, but even on the good days their lies linger.

On the bad days, I want to run away from everything and everyone and never come back. I wouldn’t even feel guilty for leaving a baby behind- but I’d miss my husband. If I took hubby with me, he’d make me come back. So the demons tell me that if I really want to be free of life and its miseries then I’d have to take hubby and baby with me- I couldn’t do it otherwise. Which in a way is a good thing because I’d be less likely to actually harm myself, but it’s kind of scary because my demons like to help me think of efficient ways to destroy me and my little family. The sad stories you hear about a dad or a mom losing it and killing their family and then themselves – kind of makes sense to me. And that too scares me.

My mind is far scarier than any horror film or book because what I think could one day actually be 

reality.

Another truth about depression, it affects everyone around you.

My husband recognizes that this isn’t just something that goes away. He does everything he can to help me find the help I need to face these demons, these negative and terrifying thoughts I have, so I can get back to being Daria. 

Moments of Motherhood

There are moments when I can hold my son and his screaming and crying doesn’t faze me because I know that he doesn’t have the ability, training, or understanding yet to use words to express his needs.

There are moments when his cries tear at my ears like a caged animal desperate to get out and all I want to do is drown out his wailing with headphones in and music blasting.

There are moments when I love to hold him in my arms while I feed him and watch his tiny alien eyes watch me with curiosity.

There are moments when I desperately wish I wasn’t his source of food and the very thought of having to feel the pain of him sucking on me, pulling on me, scratching me or grabbing me with his sharp fingers is almost too much too bear.

There are moments when snuggling him and holding him close brings peace.

There are moments when I’ve held him non-stop and I crave nothing more than being as far away from him as humanly possible.

There are moments when I can talk to him about anything and everything, because he’s a wonderful listener.

There are moments when I’m so alone with my thoughts and emotions that I can’t find the motivation to leave the bed, the couch, the house.

I knew long before I ever got married, ever was intimate, ever was an adult, that parenting was going to be hard. When friends and acquaintances talked about having children as if it was like going to Disneyland, I laughed. Oh how I played devil’s advocate and brought up the flip side of having children and they in turn laughed at my so called pessimism.

It’s not that I never wanted children. It’s that I knew that when you had children you’d get the whole thing- the good, the bad, and the smelly.

This thought was interrupted by feeding my son- this time a moment of necessity because my chest hurt too much not to feed him. I would have fed him anyway but the motivation is not always the same.

I don’t know if I want to be a mom… I don’t know if I want to pull through another week of a son who won’t nap and I end up holding all day, and whose needs I put far before my own because the guilt of not taking care of him is powerful motivation. 

I find it hard to do anything other than the necessities for him and me. The mom blogs talk about the despair of wearing pajamas- I find it hard to get dressed at all. My pinterest feed has everything from tips to get my son to sleep at night to recipes for increasing my milk supply- yet I can’t find the motivation to eat one real meal a day.

I know I need help, but the idea of someone seeing my dirty dishes, my un-vacuumed floor, and my piles of laundry and thinking that I’m a terrible wife and mom because I should have figured it out by now. I should have figured out how to use my free time during his naps to get those things done. I should have figured out how to make dinner, do homework, and do simple cleaning around my house by now. But I haven’t. I see the mess I live in and want to hide and not care, but the guilt of it not being done and the shame that I haven’t done better haunt me.

I crave company and at the same time am grateful that I no-one visits because then nobody has to see me in my mess.

I’m barely coping as a married parent who has a spouse who is supportive and does his fair share of the parental responsibilities. I don’t know how a single parent does this.

Oh how I wish there was sleep I could hide in, a song I could drown in, a show I could escape in… but I spent 40 weeks and 5 days carrying that boy inside me with the heartburn, morning sickness, and pain followed by the five hours I spent pushing to bring him into this world. I can’t escape that need to at least make sure that he’s alive and breathing even when he lets go during a feeding and we both get sprayed with milk, or he pees through his clothes and mine after I just got him dressed, or he falls asleep only to wake up ten minutes later because I coughed. The darkness I’d love to surrender to is held back by my sheer guilt and anxiety of not being a mom- even if I feel like the worst mom ever.

So why type this? Why share this with the world when my biggest fear is that the world will see me in my darkness and judge?

Because this is how I ask for help and use my words when the darkness tells me that a phone call or a text message isn’t worth the effort. 

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.