So…I ruined Christmas and the thing is that I just could not prevent it doing so. Oh, yes I have felt totally run down before at this time and I have been dealing with the cliché meltdowns that tend to come along with filled up stores and parking lots of supermarkets. In the past I have always managed to deal with these and adding them up to my list of Christmas preparations. There is so much that can make me loose it and make me wonder if kind and patient Stallie moved to the Nord pole for the Christmas season. No surprises and not that I never try to be ahead of the game…I do but there is only as much as you can do and this year I found out.
I had been planning ahead of time all those things that you can and yes I did once again postpone the giftshopping but it also helped me to save out money and that is then what I rather would call a win-win situation. One other thing that I ended up doing this season was making my holiday wreath instead of having my lovely friend H designing it. I had fun making it with lovely friends and having a lovely glass of bubbly but that almost sums it up. A few days ago I even asked my two beloved men to throw it out. They looked at me if as I had lost it but hey can you blame me knowing that I just don’t feel Christmas inside of me. Of course they refused but next year it will be H again who will have her wreath decorating our home.
Now if this would have been all I had rather regrets about, then this would have been fine but about one week before we were to break up for the Christmas Hols I started to feel a bit under the weather. I did try to fight back and I even did spend one day on the sofa and did rest up in the hope to fool the Christmas Gringe. For a few days I felt rather fine although I did not attend a few of the annual Christmas get togethers because of feeling still a bit less upbeat and also having to deal with something at home that just took up all my mental space. Christmas shopping was being delayed and I did not ended up going to one of the Christmas markets. Just to be on the safe side… and my mental sanity.
When I then finally ended up in the seat of my hairdressers for my blow out and styling for Christmas Eve and Day festivities I felt okay and all the boxes on my to do list where almost ticked. Last minute I even decided to drive to the one of the British stores and hoping to score some crackers. I use these as a table decoration at my family Christmas dinner. You should have seen me when I managed to get one of the last boxes and that I even got to buy a nice Christmas bookpocket for 5 euros even topped that outing up. Also I had packed up all the things and gifts to take home two days ahead of time so that nobody would have to stress. Stallie did stick to her list and nailed it! Hurray and I have now deserved a nice Orla Kiely bag for Christmas…internet here we come!
It was a very wet, dark and windy Christmas Eve and Peter had volunteered to go and get our dinner. Still I decided to go along and I felt a bit less okay when we go home. It was very hard to shake it off but I did manage to keep smiling and dove into the kitchen. The food was lovely and none of the dishes hard to prepare and I did manage to do the dishes the night itself and not having to ignore them the morning after, what then causes the equivalent of a major hangover without having been drunk. Still I felt suddenly cold and I even started to have chills and no appetite for dessert! I changed into my Christmas pjs in a record time and prayed that this was not going to be what I did think it was.
In the morning I woke up and I just knew…no Christmas Day for Stallie. I did look a bit pale, my nose was blocked, coughed a bit, had a splitting headache and my body did hurt all over and I felt so depressed and anxious. There is no other way of describing myself then feeling horrid. The thing was that my fellow housemates had the inclination to think that I did exaggerated. I dragged myself to two bakeries to pick up the Christmas dinner dessert and our breakfast rolls and that in the pouring rain and wind. Inside all my usual Christmas feels and memories seemed to have evaporated. Instead all I wanted to do was cry and feel sorry for myself.
By the time I had sat down for my cappuccino and my well deserved croissant (I have been cutting down on sweets and other delights and I had not bough one singel croissant for months) P thought it was the excellent moment to start to have rant of being the house a total mess (guess that Virgin Mary would even have declined politely to spend the night in our house) and that he just did not get it that I did not get the message that eating croissants or pain au chocolate was the worst thing I could do! A few minutes later he managed to put the cherry on top of the cake by saying the following: ‘You are normally Christmas in this house and now you ruined it!’, he yelled at me.
I sat there at the kitchen table and I had just no energy anymore and I started to cry.
“Why don’t you take a painkiller?’ and ‘That is when you hardly exercise..’ were a few of the other nice pieces of advice I got catapult at me. All I could do was shrug and by the minute I felt worse. When both of them had left the kitchen (nope not cleaned up) I managed to sneak upstairs and next I had to do the unthinkable cancel Christmas Day dinner at my family. The moment my mum picked up the phone the tears just poured out of me. ‘Oh dear…you sound not okay C. You need to take of yourself. We do need the food you prepared but when can figure that out.’ After a five minute teary conversation I went back down and called Christmas to a total stand still.
The looks I got from my two men were priceless and that one of them had a medical degree and was still declaring painkillers the key to salvation at that point was beyond me. Partners of medical personal you must feel my pain…we first have to drop death before we are taken serious! I then started to write short instructions for my son and my family that went along with the food and other packed goodies. P seemed to come a bit to his senses and after I had packed everything into his car he get in and drove with A to my family. It was now officially: the driving home for Christmas was something that was not going to happen this year and I was going to spend mine on the sofa in the company of painkillers, tissues and a thermometer.
The following two days I just have been trying got keep my fever under control and trying to catch some sleep. I did manage to keep my Duolingo Strike going and I also unwrapped the gifts that A brought back from home. But Christmasy I did not feel at all…sick, ill, sad, disappointed , unloved and misunderstood…and tons of other negative sensations were rather running wild throughout my system. My diet consisted out of water and painkillers and some toast crumbs. I guess that I had the most low calorie Christmas Day dinner ever.
It took me till Thursday to get back on my feet and I even canceled other social engagements because I just couldn’t face the music or Christmas cheer. Inside Christmas seemed to have moved on and had already been boxed it up for another year. When my mother called to check up on me and told that I had been missed it made me feel a tiny bit better but not much. ‘Take good care of yourself and you need to rest or you will be down again in a few days.’, she told me. That is exactly what I am trying to do but this one is a sticky one and refuses to let go of me. Yet…
At the moment I am still coughing and not 100% on the same page as most of the people around me. I don’t feel like planning ahead due to threading to relapse. A friend of mine told me that up to three times she was back down before she was back on the right track. I’m now down to two and that cough that I will not easily shake off. Sorry if you over the next weeks run into to me and ask me how our Christmas has been…it is one to rather not to remember and that I hopefully will recover soon from.
Nope…2023 was in many ways rather challenging and at the moment my hormones also seem to have very wild plans for the year to come. In the year to come will be happy that I will get through an other school year in once piece and that my plans for my special birthday will not be intervened by a sick bug or nasty cold. Oh please don’t start me now on the Gaza and Ukraine…I am not living under a rock while I was on the sofa fighting my fever off! Believe me! Okay…let me have now a piece of the ice cream Christmas log I had ordered for Christmas Eve without having to feel that guilty…Okay…thank you.
I do hope sincerely that you all had yourself a little merry Christmas that you were after and that 2024 will be the year that there will be many happy tidings heading your way. Guess we will have to all bite through a sour apple now and then in the year to come but then I do hope their will be heaps of hope and empathy around as well. Best wishes of Stallie to you all.
