That magical time of the year that makes us all go insane

A holiday story of constant stress that I'm sure many can relate to. While you may not have a recurrent pattern of bad shit that happens to you every year between November and December, I'm sure the holiday stress bug has hit you at one point or another. Here is my story. My advice to you all, since all our stories are different, is to just simply ignore all your emotions that occur between mid-November and the end of December, and then party like hell when January 1st rolls around, because thank GOD it's a new freakin' year and that shit is behind you.

As I'm sitting here simultaneously feeling bored, annoyed, discontent and a number of other unpleasant emotions it hits me. I absolutely HATE this time of the year. That span of weeks between mid-November and Christmas is never marked with anything even resembling pleasant. Ironically we seem to think that decorating our houses, giving gifts and spending time with family gives this part of the year some special magical feel. For me it's full of stress that seems to be coming out of nowhere, tension over things I can't even begin to put a finger on, and an incredible wish for it all to be over as soon as possible.

When did this begin? I used to enjoy the holidays as I recall. I think it was some time after I left home for college and starting having to travel that I truly started hating the holidays. No longer were they a fun time to wake up and find a tree filled with gifts, but instead a time of hassled shopping, traveling in much-too-close quarters with other stressed out people, and always with a sense of feeling out of place since I was no longer at "home." In addition to the "seasonal blues" we read about, I can think of a series of events ranging from semi-unpleasant to traumatic that seem to occur always at this time of year.

The first in this series of events was coming home from college. I'd grown accustomed to being on my own, having my own friends, my own curfew and doing whatever I wanted, when I wanted. This was a happy time for me. To come home I'd have to leave all that behind, change my wardrobe and hairstyle completely to avoid parental scorn, and then endure however many days of being stuck there until I could come back to school. There were moments of enjoyment visiting the family, but they were always sullied by the not so subtle undertones of guilt. "Why did you move so far away? (By "so far away" of course they meant less than 2 hours). When are you going to come back and live at home with us? We miss you, you should think about your parents sometimes. How come you don't call us more often?" The constant overlying guilt and pressure would make any possible moment of holiday fun very difficult, if not impossible to enjoy. Leaving to go back to school was always my favorite part of the holiday season.

My first year away at college during that time of year, I developed cytomegalovirus and was confined to my bed in my lone dorm room for nearly a month before I had enough energy to even lift myself down the stairs. That was certainly a blast. My parents seemed unconcerned at best. They were just upset I'd chosen to move back to my dorm rather than stay at home another month, not because I was sick and they wanted to take care of me, but because they wanted me to be at home. This pattern (minus the virus) ensued for several years of undergrad, during which my grandfather passed away during the holidays (while my parents kept this information from me long enough for me to miss his funeral entirely), my pets died during the holidays, and my then boyfriend was diagnosed with a chronic incurable disease during the holidays. Worse still my mother found it deplorable for him to come stay with us when he desperately needed someone to take care of him following a very ugly adenoid and tonsil removal he'd just undergone. She couldn't understand why he was bleeding all over the pillowcase while he slept at night.

After years of that, I finally moved in with some new friends just prior to graduation. Around that time my parents gave me the option to either move back home and live with them (while they paid me) or support myself fully. I'd just started dating the love of my life and wasn't about to let them bribe me back home with money. As it were, I had a job already and figured I'd be OK. Somehow graduating college proved to be stressful itself. No longer a slacking student, I now had to actually work regularly and have money for things like food and shelter. No one ever really explained that to me. I freaked out on a regular basis as I came up short for rent time and time again, and medical bills and credit card bills grew exponentially. My parents constantly pressured me to move home, bribing me with ridiculous sums of money. I was insulted, hurt and I refused. I started having panic attacks around the holidays this time. It was a lot of fun.

I worked full time for two years, each year having to go through the same cycle of stressing out over the approaching holiday gifts I could not afford, while asking for practical things like new car tires and realizing in the end I'd have to pay for those myself as well. I was always tense at home, like I couldn't wait to get back around people who understood me enough to at least ask occasionally how I was doing. The following year I began applying to graduate schools, around the holidays. This year was especially horrible as my apparent future loomed in the foreground just out of reach. I was basically kicked off my current job and told I couldn't perform my new job without being a graduate student. My supervisor told me she was giving me this new position because "I was a star." Great, thanks for the opportunity. I wasn't even sure if I was ready to go back to school yet.

Thankfully I got into the 14th ranked school in the country for my program, and proceeded to make it work for awhile. The first year was fine, and for once the holidays meant I was simply poor, not scorned or offered advice on how to advance myself. On the contrary, my mother made it a point of telling everyone she met her daughter was going to get a PhD. The following year, again around the holidays, I found out my Uncle was going to die from cancer in 2 or 3 months. This was just 2 months after the death of my grandma which sent me into the first panic attack I'd had in 3 years. If you could even call that a panic attack....it was more like an epileptic seizure of crying that scared my otherwise totally oblivious parents enough to even suggest I take some medication. They usually tell me not to worry, and absolutely detest drugs of any sort. I was sent home early from the funeral.

I decided it was approaching a point where I couldn't stay in graduate school if it meant continuing in the way the program wanted me to be functioning. They wanted me to take on a second client. I told them honestly I was having health problems with my leg, we couldn't figure out why my muscle was acting up but it was making me late to class. We had to walk 10-15 minutes from the parking lot and I was consistently 10 minutes late. Professors seemed completely unsympathetic that an otherwise straight-A student with her thesis practically completed in her first year of the program, was having documented medical problems (and an obviously noticeable 25 lb weight-loss) that made her feel it would be irresponsible to take on a second client at that time. Sometimes I got dizzy and almost passed out in class. No one seemed to notice that either. When I heard my Uncle was dying, I realized that would be the end of any sanity I had left. I tried to make it work with the program, but they forced me to take medical leave. I was literally told "all the other students are seeing two clients right now. If you can't do that, you should take medical leave." So I did. I was angrily 2/3 of the way through the semester, a month from defending my thesis (and thus getting my master's degree), but I was so angry that these people who were ironically licensed therapists, were such assholes as to deny me that small satisfaction amidst a sea of uncertain pain I was experiencing, I no longer cared. I signed the forms and took my leave of absence.

Not that it was much of a "leave" of anything. I was still expected to direct an entire research study (conquering alone the work I now do 40 hours a week along with 2 research assistants and another 30 hour a week data manager), continue doing all the work for my courses, preparing my thesis defense and meet regularly with people at the University. I felt like I wasn't resting at all. That holiday season, all I heard was " I really hope you'll get back to school soon" from my mother. No questions about my medical problems or how I came to take medical leave in the first place. Just her hopes that I'd suck it up as soon as possible. It was as if she thought I was making the whole thing up. Everyone except my advisor and boyfriend seemed to think I was just "stressed," with no physical cause. After that period of non-rest I decided to try to come back to school since I didn't really feel like I was on leave anyway. I worked my ass off that summer to get ready to come back, taking our clinical classes as mandated. Things seemed fine, then when September rolled around my clinical supervisor gave me an F out of nowhere, without any reasonable explanation I could understand. Even she said "I felt this would come as a surprise to you and I didn't want to give you an F." Still no explanation why she did.....It was all vague and confusing, and I decided I'd been through enough. I accepted their suggestion that I withdraw from the courses, a suggestion the school gives when someone receives an F. My advisor recommended we contest it and fight, but I had no fight left in me except anger over wasting my time listening to everyone who told me to go to grad school in the first place.

That winter was even more fun. Finally I was 'free' to just work a normal 40 hours per week job like most people. No staying up til 4am, no reading hundreds of pages or writing novels about neurology. For the first time in a long time, I felt free. Instead I got to listen to how I "should have tried to talk to her (the supervisor who failed me) or stick it out a little longer, just to finish your master's." This hurtful advice, coming from someone who never set one foot into an undergraduate course, was mostly ignored on my part. What did she know? How to make me miserable and feel guilty for not still living at home at the age of 30? Yep, apparently she could play that card. I couldn't wait to get back to Maryland and be with my friends, the only people who would actually help me recover from this nightmare. It was the shortest amount of time I'd spent home for the holidays ever.

Then after a year of relative calm, came the inevitable possibility that I would lose my research job due to funding. That started last October and finally subsided in April. Now it has begun again and remains up in the air as of September. It appears my job of 8 years will be finally ending next March. My family doesn't like to address reality issues, like disease, unemployment or anything that falls outside the "happy bubble." They tell me I'm not serious about this, they keep telling me not to worry and go back to school. And what they'd like for gifts this year. This is my constant story of the holidays. Being confronted with obnoxious shit that doesn't make any sense and having to pretend I'm happy because it's the holidays. YAY! You know when my holiday starts? The millisecond between 12/31 and 1/1 that is my anniversary with my Beebo. That is the only reason I don't kill myself during the holidays. Thankfully there is a light at the end of the holiday death tunnel.