Coping with the Upcoming Holidays

This post is inspired by this week’s prompt of Sex Bloggers for Mental Health

Halloween has passed and somehow that means it is now time for Christmas, starting on the 1st of November. THAT IS 54 days until Christmas day. It essentially means that ‘we’ dedicate almost 2 months to Christmas. 2 MONTHS! That is how much ‘we’ all love Christmas, but I’m not one of the people that does…

I don’t entirely hate Christmas, but I also don’t love it. Some holidays make me feel more depressed during that time of the year. I feel worse around mother’s day (as I don’t speak to my mum), don’t know how to cope with my birthday at all (I know it’s not a holiday but…) and Christmas and New Years… They represent childhood in some way, but in a negative way. As a child, you don’t have the freedom to decide what you want to do with your life, for a lot of it. It makes sense, of course, because you’re a child. If we put this in the context of Christmas… Christmas means that you have to slip back into the role that family has created for you and this can make me dissociate and feel quite depressed.

New years, on the other hand, reminds me of my mum again as I would always spend it at home with her, playing a board game and eating cheesecake or something. And to be honest, Christmas too reminds me of the non-existing relationship of my mum, which gives me nightmares of her choking me once every month or so.

Anyway, I want to focus on Christmas. However, Before I start getting into the deeper reason of my dislike for Christmas, I want to sidetrack a little.

Last year (18/19) and the year prior (17/18) to that I partially disliked going home because it meant I’d be without my toys and in less flexible circumstances to play with Miss Lois. (This isn’t specific to Christmas, but the case every time I go home. Yet, having the option to use some of my toys and feel a bit more like a slave would certainly help me a lot around Christmas!) Parents don’t tend to understand why you’d lock yourself in a room for several hours, especially when you’re visiting them because in that case, they want you to spend time with them, which is reasonable. My parents also just walk into my room at random times, and I’d love them not to when I happen to pleasure myself lol. But it makes it quite difficult to know when I can, which then to be fair is mostly at night when they’ve gone to bed.

This year I’m no longer in the dynamic with Miss Lois, but going home will still mean that I can’t just decide to have some fun whenever I want to. I can take a vibrator with me at most… or clamps and my hood, they’d fit in my suitcase. But when I’m going through airport security, I really don’t want my entire suitcase to be filled with all my kinky toys. Plus, I need some space for clothes, haha.

Back to Christmas. I liked it a lot more as a child. We would usually get the tree in the second week of December and spend a whole weekend on decorating, using all the props stored in the dozen of boxes that my mum would have to get out of the attic. Decorating the tree was one of the most exciting things and I loved this one teddy-bear like a toy of Winnie the Pooh and his friends on a sledge that would move and sing if you pressed this button. Mum had brought that one home after one of her business trips.

Christmas was never a holiday with loads of presents in our house, but throughout December small and then a few bigger packages would start appearing under the tree, which we unpacked on Christmas Eve, the for my mum, most important day (well, eve) of the Christmas holidays.

The thing I disliked about Christmas was the mandatory family gatherings. My families tradition is to see my mum’s side of the family on Christmas day and my dad’s side of the family on Boxing day. This meant that we would either go to see these family members or they’d come to us. Christmas and boxing day would, therefore, mean sitting in a circle in the living room, eating a variety of cakes and other sugary stuff (that was another good part) and listening to boring adult conversations. Then we’d have dinner that lasted 2 to 3 hours (I don’t know how??) and then return to the living room to talk some more even though everyone would have run out of conversations by then.

On my dad’s side of the family, there’d often be a fight over something stupid. My aunt got a round fishbowl because she wanted to have a fish and my grandmother nearly didn’t show up for Christmas because she was angry at my aunt for buying the bowl, saying how it’d be bad for the fish. (I mean, I guess it would be bad for the fish swimming round in circles all the time but was it really worth a fight?) They then still proceeded to have that same fight as we were all gathered together and when people get angry at each other for that… well… I dissociate, and just. Ugh.

Another thing I absolutely hated (and still hate) was that once I finished my plate everyone was like “You barely ate anything. Eat some more, you’re so thin.” This stemmed from the time that I was very thin, but never underweight, because I was born too early and just, I don’t know, was a lot smaller? Somehow this has stuck and even though I am definitely a normal size now and have been for years, they still say the same thing every time. I guess it’s because they don’t want to feel bad about ‘eating so much’ themselves, but just leave me alone! Stop making me feel wrong for being who I am even if that’s through eating.

However, I didn’t yet dread Christmas when I was a child, but I certainly started dreading it after my parents divorced. They announced that they were going to divorce halfway November. My dad essentially moved out into his car, my mum had a new guy start living with us (calling it ‘visiting’) two weeks later and my sister fled to live with my grandmother the day before he arrived. As you can imagine, I wasn’t happy with my mum’s arrangement of her new boyfriend either and we had quite some fights. My internship boss who had also become a close friend and a sort of mother figure for me invited me over to celebrate Christmas with her family instead but I felt too guilty in the end and so I went with Mum and her boyfriend to my mum’s side of the family. Again I just dissociated and kept on smiling when it was required, feeling pretty depressed underneath.

In the years that followed, I felt guilty about choosing to be with my mum on Christmas over being with my dad and also for skipping the family visit on Boxing day. I made this choice because spending time with my mum’s family was simply more peaceful and less dramatic with no loud voices being raised.

One year I skipped Christmas with the family entirely by celebrating it with my friend and her family (and another friend) in Germany. I think that was one of the happiest Christmases I’ve had. In recent years, however, I started balancing it out (again because of my guilt) and spent Christmas day with Mum and Boxing day with my Dad, including the family visits.

I think the worst part of Christmas is the days and months leading up to it. The building ‘excitement’ that everyone else feels is dread for me. I have so many days to think about how awful it is going to be, or remembering how awful it was for the x amount of years from the past that I inevitably probably make it worse than it is. I always put off buying my plane tickets to go home until 4 to 2 weeks on beforehand while literally everyone starts asking me 3 months prior if I’ve bought them yet. I just… don’t want to think about it.

So last year I dreaded Christmas like that, but then it turned out to be okay. Mum decided to have a family free Christmas so we spend it peacefully at home and to deal with my dad’s family I designed a Christmas quiz and hosted it to keep everyone occupied. It broke their Christmas traditions, which is kind of a no-go for them but my dad’s family loves games and events so I knew I had a chance of pushing this through. They also love being loud. It’s everything I hate, haha (at least, if it’s with family). But as I had predicted, they did like it in the end, pledging to do it again next year! This way, I didn’t have to participate in their crazy shenanigans and they appreciated me without me having to play a certain role for them.

Around this time last year, I had also started dressing up more nicely and was wearing heels every now and then. And for Boxing day, I dressed up nicely, wearing make-up, Christmas-y nail polish, heels (which everyone complimented) and a present hairband (because instead of bringing presents that year, I decided my presence was going to be the present). And dressing up nicely in the presence of all of them, which was slightly terrifying to me, made me feel really good about myself.

Another thing that I personally enjoyed doing was drawing on my naked body as a ‘Christmas present’ for Miss Lois, about which I wrote here.

Yet, regardless of the successful Christmas last year, I am once again dreading it this year. My mum and I no longer speak so I won’t be spending Christmas with her and I’m scared of how that will make me feel. Because I’m not spending Christmas with her, it means I’ll be spending it with my dad’s girlfriend’s side of the family, which… I don’t feel entirely comfortable around, although I love his girlfriend. Additionally… my dad and her are expecting a baby this week and… well. I have no idea how I feel about that!

The fact that people all around me are ALREADY!! starting to talk about Christmas and celebrating it doesn’t help. It’s like when I hear someone talk about their great relationship with my mum and I’m like… …

The way I tend to deal with the upcoming holidays is by ignoring it for as long as I can and then when they happen, they happen and I might be unhappy when they do. But oh well, I can’t change it, really. I hope that I’ll be able to celebrate Christmas and make it a positive holiday when I have a future partner/Mistress. I’d love to celebrate it by having some kinky session. Make a pretty Christmas drawing on my body with candle wax, or something.

How do you celebrate Christmas? Have you ever done something kinky for Christmas? I’d love to hear about it if you have!

Anyhow, happy November! (the month that really shouldn’t be dedicated to Christmas in any way at all!)

Xx MLSlavePuppet

Have a look at my advent calendar.

This post is inspired by this week’s prompt of Sex Bloggers for Mental Health