Christmas, loneliness, family, need a hand hold

[ThanksAntsThants]

I don’t know what I want from this post really, just to scream into the void maybe, I don’t know. I’m sorry that this is long, I just need to speak and be heard.

I have a serious disability that makes going out alone and meeting people difficult. I try my best but unless I have someone to help me it’s impossible, public transport is appalling where I live and taxis are expensive and the only company that operates in the area is terrible, I’ve had some really awful, frightening experiences with them, so I really don’t get out much at all. I really try, I chase every opportunity but things never seem to get any better.

I am lonely and isolated. I volunteer once a week or so but apart from that I don’t have a lot going on.

I haven’t been sleeping lately. I fall asleep for half an hour, then wake up and lie awake for the rest of the night. I feel like crap.

I’m also NC with my mother. I went NC with her in the summer after she launched yet another vicious verbal attack on me for no reason. She’s done it to me since I’ve been 11 or 12, ever since I started developing a personality of my own. I was her pet and I guess she didn’t like it when I became someone she couldn’t control. I have tried with her, oh how I have tried, but she just won’t hear me when I tell her that it hurts me when she says these vicious untrue things about me, she just denies it and escalates. I have posted on here about her before.

So Christmas is coming, and it’s bringing everything up to the surface. I get on wellwith my sister, she comes to me for support a lot, support that she doesn’t get from our mother. She has however invited our mother for Christmas so I will be spending it at home with my DS. My sister also has a very strained relationship with my mother, she’s very LC, but faced with a choice of mother being on her own or me and DS being on our own she’s chosen to invite my mother.

I understand that she would have felt guilty either way whichever one of us she didn’t invite, and I understand that my mother would have been all on her own where as I have DS, but I feel hurt and angry. I feel like my mother is being rewarded while I’m being punished. She has driven me away from her with her abuse, and my sister has little to do with her for the same reason, yet I’m the one being left out. I have had to go NC with her to protect myself and my DS, and my sister knows very well what my mother is like and is very LC herself. I don’t think my sister really understands how badly my mother has treated me, that or she doesn’t want to believe it, and I’m angry that I’m the victim of my mother’s abuse, and she knows it, yet my mother is coming out on top again. My mother has treated everyone like shit all her life and she’s never had any consequences, we’ve all had to bend and suffer, and it’s happening again.

Like I said, I don’t know what I want, and I’m sorry this has been so long, I just need to get it out as I have nobody to talk to and I’m finding myself being miserable and difficult with DS and I don’t want to be. I’m really struggling and I don’t know how to feel better.

Bump, anybody?

I completely understand why this would be hurtful to you. It sounds like you have a good relationship with your sister. I expect it's just as you think - your sister knows you have your son, but your mother wouldn't have anyone, and she felt obliged to invite your mum. She is a victim of your mum like you are, and you are both still suffering the effects of her being your mother. So try not to let this get between you and your sister. You have each other, and you have a good relationship. Don't let your mother come between you. Don't let her 'win'.

Could you maybe talk to your sister and explain that you would still love to have Christmas with her, and agree on an alternative 'Christmas Day'. I know a few people who consider another date their 'Christmas Day' because they don't particularly enjoy the 25th December (some have to work all day, some spend it with family they really don't get on with etc). You can then look forward to, say, 26th December or 1st January as a celebration with your sister.

In a wider sense, you clearly do all you can to reduce your dependency on others, and to get out there and live life. I know you didn't ask about this, so feel free to tell me to mind my own business, but is moving a possibility? To somewhere with better public transport or where there's lots happening close by? This could be helpful to you and also to your DS (don't know how old he is, but presumably he also needs to see people and get out there).

I know that won't help you this year, but longer term it might make life a bit easier for you.

Focus on you and your son. Do Christmas at yours with all the traditions and trimmings you like and none of the stuff you don't. The first Christmas I had without my toxic mother was just me and my 3 year old DD and it was the best Christmas ever. 25 years on and those traditions we set up and still up and running strong. And I haven't had any extended family round once. That's why I love Christmas.

I'm really sorry to read you're feeling so isolated. I'm assuming that driving or learning to drive is not a possibility due to disability? That would give you some sense of independence if that was possible.

As for your family situation, can you take the pressure off Christmas Day itself and have two Christmasses? Let your sister do whatever with your mother on the 25th but then have your sister over for 'Christmas Day 2' on the 26th?

We're doing something like that this year, not because of NC but to save faraway family having a very long drive on Christmas Eve/Christmas Day. So we've postponed our Christmas Day to Boxing Day instead.

Finally, to address your bigger issue of isolation, is moving (at some point) an option? Being in a place where there's accessible transport and things to do, may well open up your world and allow you to meet new people. One of my family members was in a similar position, struggling with significant disability and a home 'in the sticks'. A move has completely changed his world and he's happier than he's ever been and is now also in a relationship - not something he ever dreamed was possible.

I wish you well!

no, learning to drive is definitely not possible. The disability is blindness, so definitely no driving for me.

moving is a bad idea. I’d have to learn my way around a whole new place again and I only moved here two years ago. I moved back to my hometown, because where I lived previously, I could no longer afford. Blindness is a particularly shitty disability that makes everything hard, and there practically no help out there whatsoever, and I know because I have explored every avenue for finding it.

my sister doesn’t seem keen on the idea of doing another Christmas. Boxing Day they are at her partner’s family. I’m just frozen out basically.

there really isn’t anything people can suggest that I haven’t already thought of, I just wanted to be heard. I am an intelligent, proactive person, anything that can be tried is being or has been. I keep fighting because I have to but things don’t feel like they ever get better, and Christmas is a shitty time of year to be lonely.

Christmas brings up all the old ghosts. I am in a good place now, but I still feel these deep-seated feelings of loneliness and anxiety at this time of year - like it is baked into my bones now. Every Christmas demands that I manage my feelings, and practise self care.

As for parents and siblings, every child has a different mother. Even if you are siblings, what happened to you did not happen in the same way to your sister. My brother simply did not understand the way my mother treated me. After I went NC with her, he decided to go NC with me. There's something especially socially unacceptable about daughters not supporting mothers.

I would suggest you put all the boundaries in that you need - unapologetically and without excess drama. I wish you a peaceful time, on your own terms, with the self care in place that will help you through.