Under Construction - MHWA Retreat

The title basically sums up how I feel.

It's hard to even say, "I hate the holidays" because the holiday season is such a majorly engrained part of society here in the U.S. at least. You have Thanksgiving at the end of October, then Christmas, then New Year's. You can actually tell when you're out and about that Halloween has ended. It's like the 1st of November hits and that shit is just ON. The streets and the stores are packed from November 1st until like January 15th. I swear, our population triples.

I stopped liking holidays when I was probably about 10 or 11 years old. Before that, of course I was into them, even if it meant Christmas Mass. I think I started disconnecting from things and other people around that age and I was like damn, could this shit be any more commercialized?

Gift giving feels like a competition. Eating feels like a marathon. The weather is usually terribly cold and windy. And you can't say that you don't like the holidays. I mean, you can, but you're not going to be met with a good response. Like, the average person isn't gonna be like, "Oh really? Me too! Grinch buddies, high five!"

Most of the time you're going to get called a Scrooge or someone's gonna be like, "BAH HUMBUG" and you're just awkwardly going to stand there and be like, "So, yeah..."

People just seem manically into the holidays. There's a ton of pressure to buy people special gifts, find time to spend with family, eat a ton of unhealthy food, and decorate your entire life in holiday-themed everything.

But all of that pales in comparison to the pressure you have to be happy.

Whatever 'happy' is. You need to just seem like things are going super well during that time of year. If they're not, you're gonna need to fake it. Which boils down to the absolute reason I don't like the holidays - they discourage authenticity.

After working in retail during holidays, it was easy to see that just beneath this holly jolly facade, people are absolutely miserably trying to do what they're supposed to do for the holidays. They're racing around trying to find the perfect gift, prepare the perfect food, and have the perfect day with their family. And the entire time they're doing it, they're also feigning goodwill.

It's unnatural.

I do celebrate the holidays with my family when I can, because it's obviously super important to them. But there's pretty much nothing I like about the holidays. It's a very uncomfortable time of year for me with all the memories and all the people who aren't around anymore to create new memories with.

Best,
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