How to Spend Christmas Alone

For those of you who have the stirrings of pity right now because of the title of this post, cut it out.

I do not write this for you to feel sorry for me, because I did enough of that myself this weekend. I write this to make light of my current situation because hopefully it's only temporary and I will look back on this weekend next year and marvel at how I'm happy to never feel this way again.

I spent Christmas alone. Well, sort of alone, I had my two cats to keep me company (just when you thought this post couldn't go to the next level of depressing, I hit you with the stereotype of crazy cat lady!)

I had an offer from my parents to have Christmas with them...but I just did Thanksgiving with them for the first time in at least fifteen years, so Christmas would have been a little too much. I can only take my parents (my mother especially) in extremely small doses. As it was, I had to actually call them on Christmas (a new practice for us) and even though the call only lasted ten minutes, I hung up feeling irritable and spent. That's one thing that sucks about being an only child, there is no one else to deal with your parent's shenanigans.

Anyway...the suicide rate skyrockets around the holidays and until you spend Christmas alone, you don't really understand why. (Don't worry, at no point during the weekend did I actually consider offing myself)

It's depressing as hell. It's lonely. There is the feeling of desolation and complete isolation from the rest of civilization. I won't kid you and say that I didn't do any sobbing and feeling sorry for myself for having parents that suck, friends that live or celebrate the holidays far away, and no actual boyfriend.

So how did I survive it all?

I slept about 100 hours over the weekend. I slept 10 hours every night and napped for 2-3 hours every day at least once, sometimes twice. I watched copious amounts of bad movies and read two books. I cooked an entire box of taco shells because I was having a craving for tortilla chips. I baked an apple loaf and then proceeded to eat half the loaf within 24 hours.

And I smothered my cats. Usually one of my cats, Mica, is all over me all the time. But I loved her and petted her so much this weekend that by the end of Sunday she was OVER IT. She started sleeping on the bed instead. Traitor.

I cleaned. I cooked for the week. I browsed the internet. I did not watch ANY Christmas movies or shows. I did not watch any sad movies. When I felt the need to cry, I let it happen and then moved on to doing something else.

And I made it through the hell that is spending Christmas alone.

Now I have Valentine's Day to look forward to.