Christmas.

12/25/2012

Ah, Christmas. Time for eggnog, mixed emotions, brightly-colored wrapping paper, passive aggression, family, friends, and ideally some happiness, love, and hugs mixed in somewhere.

My DGF and I travelled to my brother's house, where my parents and my sister-in-law's family are also staying. I feel like I'm on the periphery of a family--like I don't *quite* fit in, like I'm not *quite* a real, functioning adult. Things that "real" people have--kids, a house--just aren't part of my life (and maybe never will be), and this drives some kind of psychic wedge between me and other people. Like I'm just on a different trajectory. During non-holiday times of year, I just quietly exist in my own separate paradigm. But somehow on Christmas eve, trying to fall asleep on the couch in my niece's playroom, I just felt so... Different. Not inadequate, exactly, more like a different (perhaps slightly defective) species. I can't explain why. It's not just the gay thing, though that's part of it. Maybe everyone feels this way at Christmas. Do you? Does anyone else recognize the feeling I'm struggling to describe?

Merry Christmas, dear readers. Sending you all hugs and wishing you all peace.

Love,
BW

18 Comments

Jesse MacGregor-Jones link

12/25/2012 04:28:56 am

I absolutely know how you feel! I do believe that many gay people feel this way. It is sad that we hold ourselves up to some standards that really don't apply to us. We need to remember that not all straight people live up to those standards either.

The holidays make me feel awkward. I try to pretend that they aren't happening. I ignore the lights, the trees. This year I put no decorations up, bought nothing - not even for myself - for Christmas. I'm happier. :)

Rock on, BW. We all find our own way eventually!

Jesse

AJ McGilbra

12/25/2012 04:48:44 am

Absolutely. But then, I tend to feel that way at any family event or gathering where beig gender queer/Gayish/etc is not generally accepted.

Annabel

12/25/2012 06:54:36 pm

Absolutely-i know they love me but i also feel like they dont know me or how to deal with ne coz there is like a wall there-they cant understand it and never will so im gonna stop worrying and have a Xmas i will enjoy next year!

riley

12/26/2012 06:48:51 am

Understand the feeling, am a victim of it every time I visit my family. I feel out of place, not fitting in, and out of place. Maybe it's just all in my head. I know Thayer love me, but still overtime it takes me a few days to be less tense around them.

Yep

12/26/2012 07:43:36 am

I also feel out of place. It is because I am gay, gender non-conforming, and just of a different mentality generally. I consider those things to be related (in my own case, at least). My priorities are different, what I consider to be interesting conversation is different from what they consider to be such, and they have some prejudices against gays, women, and people that don't follow gender norms. It has been this way my entire life. I have figured out how to make it a workable situations, but I am not part of the "inner circle" over there and never will be. Sometimes I am upset by this, but others I'm not.

springbyker link

12/26/2012 08:33:04 am

I have this problem with my nuclear families (parents divorced a zillion years ago and remarried other spouses), but I lucked out when my former partner and I got together: hir family is working-class, salt-of-the-earth folk who accept and love hir, and they "adopted" me and have been wonderful to me for the past 14 years. We still go to visit them (as friends) years after the 2 of us split up, and we have a lot of fun. I'm very lucky.

Caughtinyoureyes

12/26/2012 08:51:37 am

I know exactly what all of you are saying...it's really weird. While my DW's family "knew" she was gay, it wasn't til our wedding that there was no hiding it. I stopped feeling like the zoo animal. This year we bought the hostess a can of Gay Coffee. We ALL had a great laugh and things went smoothly. My dd is great, my ds is sort of coming around. My family all knows, but it feels like if they can just see us as friends, never having to think about us as having sex, then rhey are ok.They have a hard time introducing us as a couple at holiday gatherings. This makes me both angry feel not normal.

Max link

12/26/2012 02:08:02 pm

It's like you drafted this post from my brain. I spent most of Christmas eve teary-eyed in the back bedroom, trying to not let my own family angst take my partner away from her family time, while I sorted out pangs of terrible alone-ness and generally feeling like an overgrown child all the time. No kids, no house, non-traditional jobs, non-traditionally-gendered me, heck we can't even have pets where we live... so what do we bring to the adults-only table?

Ed link

12/27/2012 02:50:49 am

I have, my entire life. You are right, it isn't "just the gay thing" It's being surrounded by people whom I am "supposed" to be close to, and I'm not because, well, because these people have never really seemed very interested in being close to me.

That includes my parents, which is a very disconcerting thing when you are a child. Once you are old enough to understand what is happening, it just turns into pain without explaining why.

It doesn't help to "bring it up" because everyone will deny it with their dieing breath, and then go back to treating you the way they always have. I have my own family now, I have my own family now, the best I can come with for my birth family is...indifference...I don't hate anyone, it's worse than pointless, it cures nothing and just makes me physically and emotionally sick.

I'm really tired of being sick like that. It's my life and my choice and I choose not to make myself sick by pretending to be a part of a "family" that doesn't really want me.

It's rather sad, but I'm done crying about it. Now it's just sad in the sense of the missed opportunities, what "might have been" if I had a mother and father and siblings who loved me.

I have a family that loves me now, and that is what I'm focused on. Life is so much better now than it was, still....

Victoria link

12/27/2012 05:33:46 am

first: happy holidays.
second: thank you for a great year of blogs.
third: I think feelings of inadequacy, of inarticulate feelings of awkwardness, are all part of the festive season. Part of that forced familial thing.

12/27/2012 11:42:04 am

Why the hell do we keep doing this crap?

12/30/2012 05:55:53 pm

At the risk of overly generalizing I'd say because we don't want to be the "bad guys" The insensitive louts that ruined everyones Christmas by saying what we thought and by "dredging up the past" by pointing out how other family members fucked us around because, well, because they knew they could get away with it.

As one sibling put it, at Christmas of course, years ago; "Oh, like I ordered you to be depressed as a teenager. Like I forced you to drink, take drugs and be fucked up all the time. Your train-load of one week long "relationships." All that is your problem. Don't lay this shit on our doorstep, you don't like this family, fuck you, good luck finding another one."

I did.

I had to craft it with others, of course, but it's here, now.

My days of "self-medicating" are long over, and since coming to terms (more or less) with my upbringing and early adulthood, I haven't had a recurrence of the black depression I spent so many of my "coming of age" years in.

I'll never go back to my birth family for Christmas, or any other reason. It serves no constructive purpose. It never did. But I didn't want to be the "bad guy"

Justina

12/27/2012 10:34:41 pm

Your holiday post really touched the tender places we all seem to have in our hearts. In an Italian family of married sisters, all with children, I stick out like a sore thumb. And am usually relegated to the "spinster aunt" role in the kitchen (aka dishwasher).
There is no holiness to these holidays for us. Especially for those of us without the company of a partner.
Thank you for your honesty, hugs and well-wishes.
~Justina

Toni... link

12/30/2012 10:53:47 pm

Hi BW,

First time posting here. Thank you for your blog and sharing your thoughts.

I definitely can relate to what you're sharing here and that periphery feeling. I feel that way most of the time, to be honest, regardless of the time of year.

Over the years, I've come to accept that I am more or less a shadow person existing at the edges of society. I've grown accustomed to and actually have come to find enjoyment in my spot of periphery.

This last holiday season, for various reasons, I gave myself the year off from all the traditional going-ons. I am so glad I did. And, now that I've managed to break free from those traditions, I think I might not bother returning to them, instead allow myself to create new ones.

In addition to my orientation not fitting in with the straight world around me, I am also Wiccan however fortunately I am Solitary, so it doesn't bother me very much to not be included in others' gatherings. As I said, I rather have come to enjoy it.

Maybe part of the trick in coping through these holidays and all that, is finding one's own peace and ways of honoring the holidays, if one feels so inclined towards the holidays in the first place. You know what I mean? Perhaps you are indeed "on a different trajectory." And to you and your Path, I wish for you, and all of us actually, good Blessings for whatever you might want or need in this time. :}

Toni....

12/31/2012 06:10:29 pm

Hi Toni:

Do you get the feeling that being a Solitary is something you've been heading for your entire life? For me, growing up, it was this realization that I was...out of sync. Things never meshed with other people, socially or in my family. I was always one apart.

And the "apartness" was All My Fault.

It nearly drove me over the brink as a teenager. I tried to ignore it as a young adult, cover it up, actually, by going into overdrive in my bid to "fit in."

Talk about exhausting! And, of course, it didn't work. It isn't in me to fit in. It never was and never will be. Then, by a stunning coincidence, while I was seriously examining my life and wondering what direction I should move in, we had a rummage sale and I went through my boxes of books to see what I could put out.

And there was a copy of "The Spiral Dance." Which I have no memory of buying and no memory of ever seeing before that moment.

There it was, the realization that I had been moving in this direction for years. Things I believed to be true for me, based on my experiences, but probably not true for anyone else, suddenly had validity outside of myself.

I have only just started down this path, but I have no doubts about it. I've believed in it all my life without knowing what I knew. I internalized all the negative energy directed at me because of my "otherness" without questioning the validity of it.

If ten doctors tell you you're sick. lay down.

How could I possibly be right when so many different people, IMPORTANT people, are telling me I'm wrong? It was enough to give me a complex!

Blessing to you, Toni, and all those you love. It's kinda nice knowing you're not alone.

Toni

2/28/2013 12:02:40 pm

Hi Ed,

Yes, I think being a Solitary is something that's been a part of me since day one and then reinforced by family and society.

I hear what you're saying about feeling "out of sync." The few times I, as a child, shared my inner thoughts with family or friends, the usual reactions were expressions of confused consternation and the question of 'Where do you get this stuff [thoughts] from?!'

In my adulthood, I cannot even count how many times people have said, 'Hm! I never thought of that way.'

I am glad to hear that 'Spiral Dance' found you (or you found it) and that it brought a sense of truth, connectedness, a resonance of Spiritual likeness and home, as it were.

When 'Celtic Magic' came across my path, it was very much a similar feeling and the beginning of my questioning and healing all the negatives directed to and that I took into my Self. I still have some ways to go yet to releasing those negatives, but progress sure does feel nice.

Blessings to you, too, Ed, and all yours. Yes, it is nice to feel and know one is not as alone as one might feel. Blessed be.

Toni....

Toni link

2/28/2013 12:03:55 pm

Josie

1/4/2013 11:41:09 am

I think the more comfortable you are in your own skin - truly comfortable and confident - the less you care how your family views you. And you love and embrace your differentness, even if they can't.

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Christmas.

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