What does it feel like to spend Christmas alone?
By: Together We Will Rise
Tags: Perception, Christmas, Alone, Home, Pandemic

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Over the past couple of days I’ve found myself struck by a rather sad volume of despairing posts on my newsfeed. Many of you appear to be facing your first Christmas alone. I remember what this felt like. If this is you, and if at all helpful, I would like to offer my experience of the time I lost my solo Christmas virginity. At risk of being cringe, I hope that if anything like mine, all shall prove not lost for you with yours either. Mine certainly wasn’t as awful for me as I had feared.

1- Right about right now (22nd/23rd December) is as bad as it got.

Leading up to 25 December 2016 I recall feeling a great deal of pent up dread, and a sense of encroaching doom. This may well be where you are too. The very idea of spending it alone did seem to capture my imagination. It felt like a looming trap door for weeks on end. While the situation causing the event were not entirely in my control. It brought to the surface fears that my spending it alone was exclusively down to personal shortcomings. Failings to cultivate or retain the sort of relationships with people I would choose to spend this milestone occasion with. This said, by the time the day actually arrived, to my surprise I felt fine. I felt stoical even. I think that’s because the bulk of this experience had already passed over the prior days and weeks. It wasn’t ever going to live up to the horrors anticipated. The earth still turned, the sun still raised, the birds still sang. It was actually a normal day- and actually a beautiful morning too at that. Realising quite quickly things weren’t anywhere near as bad as expected.

I was able to be grateful, and to enjoy the simple things I ended up doing because I wasn’t as caught up in my own feelings or inner drama.

2- During this experience I was able to clarify my goals.

After a very sad breakup earlier in the year I found myself having retaken up running. There was a Christmas Day park run, and I was able to clock my best performance and first ever top 3 finish. It was in the shower after that I first devised the goal of completing 50 races over the next calendar year. A feat I did subsequently achieve. The goal devised on this day enabled me to elevate my game, meet new people, and see a great deal more of the UK going forward. It also enabled me to experience renewed outlets of personal accomplishment. Four years on it also royally fucked up my body, but let’s not dwell on that.

The point is I’m not sure I would have set such goals or cultivated the motivation to achieve them without this experience. This is because the experience from which they were devised gave them greater meaning.

I hope you can similarly take something positive and unexpected from similar difficulties.

3- The heightened sense of emotions made me open to heightened inspiration.

Later that afternoon, I read a book that sat unopened on my bookshelf for years. It was just fiction, but a book that had a profound personal impact on me. It contained many learnings which I’ve been able to subsequently apply in my life. I suspect the whole situation heightened my senses, and enabled me to experience things more fully. It’s in such places where you really learn, and when lessons really stay with you. You never know when you might need them.

Image by Melk Hagelslag from Pixabay

Times such as these are a test of character.

They allowed me to show myself that I have character. There is plenty of beauty to be made from ashes- even if this isn’t what you consciously set out to do. I came out of this stronger, more resilient, and able to take on much greater challenges still. With the way 2020 in ending I’m grateful for having had these prior experiences.

I hope everybody inflicted this year is able to derive something worthwhile from yours, and similar prepare you for even greater challenges ahead.