Holiday season with gratitude

The end of the year can carry a lot of emotions with it. It’s time of celebration. It’s time of being grateful. It’s time to spend it with family. It’s a happy time.

Over the years, with adulthood, this time became hard for me. And as I started having this attitude, I saw that the amount of people who share the same feeling of avoidance towards holidays was bigger that I thought. Because of different reasons, some had family members passing away near Christmas, some were nostalgic of letting go each year and facing a new one, some hated the fact of gathering with family members they were distant to just for the sake of the tradition, some got triggered by fireworks and crowds, and else.

The thing is that many of us have a difficult time following traditions, and let’s be honest: They demand a lot of energy, they rise a lot of emotions, they imply being very active.

And there’s a fact: We can’t change the fireworks, the loud music, the hypercrowded places, the collective attitude, etc. We can’t. It’s there. And avoiding it can make it even worse.

So let’s face it. And face it not because the fact that we can’t change it, but because we deserve to make it our way. We deserve to give holidays a new meaning. We deserve to do things as we feel comfortable.

What has helped me overall has been getting to the root of it. It isn’t about the chit chat with distant family members. It isn’t about the polite comments about gifts we don’t like. God, it isn’t even about the gifts or the food.

It is about taking a day, or two, or three, to be grateful. To express that gratitude to the world. To say outloud what we are thankful for, and be aware of what others are grateful for. To see how yes, things suck sometimes, but things are far better than we give them credit for. We could be a hell worse.

And being grateful won’t mean your depression or your physical illness, or your psychiatric crisis go away. It won’t.

But, we do spend many, many hours thinking about how could life be better. Thinking about how others got it easier. Fighting because this isn’t what we expected it to be.

How about taking a few hours to be thankful?

For the simple things. For even the fact of having a diagnosis or treatment. At least we have a diagnosis and we are able to get treated! That’s a huge advantage on relation to what others have to go through.

It can be hard to spend time with family. God, we at least got a family to complain about. We at least got company. We at least got someone to fight with. We aren’t alone with the T.V., wondering what it would be like to be loved.

The fireworks and the crowd gets us anxious. At least we can see, and watch the fireworks. The explosion is a hard noise, but it remind us we can listen. The crowd makes us realize that we can still feel… Or haven’t you been so depressed that you become absolutely numb and aren’t able to differenciate if you have cero or a hundred people around you? I have! And the day I could become annoyed by the amount of people on the street, I knew I was getting better. Because I was able to feel. To see. To perceive.

Useless gifts or extra salty food? Heck, at least someone thought of you and got you something. At least you got someone to give you things. And you can eat. You can eat because someone offered to cook for you. You can eat because you are part of a tradition. And if the food is tasty or not, it’s the least important stuff.

And so…

After all of these… What are you grateful for