Even
before mental illness was an issue in my life, I have never been fond
of the holiday season. I love
Thanksgiving, but Christmas and New Years have always been a time to survive,
not a time I looked forward to. I’ve
never been good at buying presents, perhaps because I’ve never been at a point
where the prospect of spending money on presents hasn’t been stressful.
Now,
with us trying to survive on one teacher salary and the money Jessica makes at
her part time retail job, the stress of present buying is omnipresent. It’s not that I want to lavish my kids with
all sorts of crazy presents; I just want to give them enough so Christmas can
seem somehow normal. I don’t try to
match what their peers get, and I don’t want to and couldn’t anyway. I don’t
want the kids to feel like we are no longer middle class. We are, I guess, but barely hanging in
there. I want the kids to enjoy
themselves, even though I realize I make it harder for them to do so since they
can sense my tension and ill feelings.
Adding
to the financial stress is of course how everything affects Jessica. She did pretty well over the holidays, even though
there were some bumps. She was just about
in tears over the Christmas tree because she felt the decorations were lacking
and no one wanted to even decorate it. That is only partly true; my 16 and 18
year old sons didn’t want to decorate the tree, but Jason, my 11 year old was
into it, at least at first. Jessica’s
anxiety and overwhelming control issues (which peak when she is stressing) made
him lose interest.
But
we made it through Christmas.
On
Christmas day we began our planned for trip to my mother-in-law’s house – a ten
hour drive. I was not looking forward to
this because I didn’t know if Jessica would be able to handle it – all three of
the boys stuffed into the back of the car for ten hours seemed like a recipe
for disaster. Jessica was very fearful
and anxious – saying she had a bad feeling about the trip. She was fearful of the drive, of the car
breaking down, of the weather. And yet
she felt that since mother was counting on us being there that we had to
go. My fear was that if Jessica did get
to a tipping point from the stress of the drive and her symptoms got worse (if
she started hearing voices or whatever) we would be hundreds of miles from home
and probably on a highway in the middle nowhere. And then there was of course the week to be
spent at my mother-in-law’s house – while Jessica and her mother get along, her
mother is a huge stressor for Jessica. Luckily
my fears were for nothing. While the
drive was sometimes a struggle for everyone, the ten hours in the car was not
the apocalypse I had thought it might be.
The kids did a good job not killing each other and Jessica was able to
handle the ride well too. At her mother’s
house, while Jessica did have her moments, she overall felt pretty well. We made the return trip without any major
problems.
New
Year’s Eve depressed me. We used to have
friends we did things with – family parties we would go to. Not anymore.
Jessica’s illness has left us pretty isolated. I can’t blame it all on
her illness, but her illness has been a large part. Jessica has slowly pulled herself away from
almost of her friends. She also can’t stand
being in crowds for very long. She says
she gets affected by “entities” that are attached to people. I’ve also found myself pulling away from
friends because I can’t do the normal things of life that people do. Whatever the reason, we’ve found ourselves
alone on New Year’s Eve for the last few years.
Jessica was in her room when the ball dropped; the two older boys were
out with friends, so Jason and I whooped it up while watching Dick Clark.
But
the holidays are over and we survived.
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