I’ve spent most of my life in poverty. I don’t like Christmas terribly much because it just gives me childhood memories of being disappointed. Nowadays I sometimes feel like a monster because I can’t make myself be (or at least pretend to be) happy during Christmas.

Every fucking store playing the worst music on repeat and I still forget my noise cancelling headphones.

Then I drive home and have to contend with, not only cars’ headlights, but rando’s houses being brighter than than the sun.

There’s always so much to do… buying presents for my extended family with money i don’t have, getting ingredients together to make foods to pass off as gifts and spending a bunch of time worrying about when to make them so they don’t go stale or aren’t ready to be packaged yet, decorating the house for just one month only to take it all down again, the constant snow and darkness, exchanging Christmas cards with my grandmother who only ever talks about how bad things are and who has died recently, visiting the in-laws on Christmas eve to wait 7 hours and open presents when midnight rolls around, and then having friends over on Christmas day for a tradition I started accidentally by making a Turducken one year. I love turducken, but it’s an hours long job just preparing the dang bird.

I honestly don’t have time, and then I go and want to just hyperfixate on one thing for a while but can’t because there’s always something I need to be doing… it’s ao exhausting.