Holiday Woes

I don't do well with the holidays. Period.

I don't know when it started, why it started or how it started, but Christmas is a time of year where I end up being really..... sad. Take today for instance. I go into the Giant to purchase food for dinner tonight. Neale is coming over and we are going to check out the lights on 34th Street. While I'm in the Giant, Christmas music is playing in the background and its slow - just instrumental - but slow. As I walk down the bread isle, I come upon an older gentleman. Hunched over, without a wedding band, trying to decide what kind of bread to buy. He just looks so... alone.

Then my brain starts working over time - how do people celebrate the holidays alone? Will I look like that some day? Will Neale? It then moves to my grandmother, how she is now in a home, for the holidays. She won't come to our house for dinner like the last 30 years, instead she'll sit in a home with other people that have Alzheimer's  I smile as I think that maybe she doesn't even know it's a Holiday. But, it's Nanny. She will always know it's a holiday in her heart.

In a small way it bothers me when I mention this to people and they look at me with that face of "You're just being silly..." and say "Whyyyyyy?!?!" I want to look at them and say - because it's my feelings. It's how the holiday makes me feel, and you can't do anything about it, so don't judge me like I only feel this way for attention. Most times I don't even say anything.

So here we are upon another holiday... trying to smile and make it through. If anything, at least I have 11 days of break to look forward to. Right?