Just looking at the title reminds me of the compilation of twitter posts from angry teenagers around the country upset about not getting an Iphone 6. This is not that kind of story.
In fact, this was suppose to be the best holiday season to date. This year has been the first year I have not had to work since high school (roughly 11 years). I have been excited that we would get to spend three full days at both of our families homes.
I know that good holidays don't really happen, you make them happen. Unfortunately, I have not been feeling well due to pregnancy and I did not have the energy to get the tree up. But who needs a tree when you will be gone for a week, right? I also failed to make Christmas cards, which I have done for the last 7 years. Because I did not decorate, it never really felt like Christmas until we arrived at my in-laws. (I'm sure the two funerals I attended added to that.)
After all that, I was still hopeful that I could turn it around with some baking. Since my in-laws don't do much cooking, we did most of it. I also baked some pretty awesome cupcakes: Gingerbread cupcakes with Lemon Butter cream frosting, and Pineapple right-side-up cupcakes. We watched holiday movies by the fire. It was really coming together.
Let us skip forward to the gifts. I love gifts. Not for the thing itself, but for the thought and effort that went into it. A good gift, you can look at and see that that person was thinking of you. That person was somewhere and thought, 'She would like this', or 'She could use this'. I'm not a picky person. I love stuff. I'm a collector of things. Each thing, I can look at and tell you where it came from, how much it cost, who gave it to me. My husband thinks I'm materialistic, but it's not that simple. It's almost an emotional thing. My grandfather is the same way. I think it's amazing how an emotion can attach to an object. I'm not talking everything though. I don't get attached to random objects. I mostly attach to things that thought went into. For instance, say that I was at a store, and I bought a flashlight. That flashlight wouldn't hold much value to me. Then, say that I went to a store looking specifically for a flashlight for a camping trip. That flashlight would remind me of that camping trip. Make sense??
Now I can properly explain why this Christmas was my worst.
At my in-laws, we decided to draw names for gifts this year. That means, I buy one gift, I get one gift. Pretty simple. They also like to take turns so we can see what each person received. It was also a secret up till that day of who got who. I had no idea who had my name. I tried figuring it out, but no luck. I was also worried, since the person who got my name waited till 3 days before Christmas to ask my husband what I wanted. I also found it odd that my husband had got me a gift, since we weren't doing that this year. I asked him why, he said that he wanted me to have something to open on Christmas. I didn't think much of it at the time, only that it was sweet. I thought, what if they couldn't find what I asked for and picked something else. In that case, no harm there, it's the thought, right? Well, it got to my turn. Everyone is watching. It was a small bag with a frame inside. I look to see what was framed. It was a note. A note saying that the thing she wanted to get me was not sold in the store, and that she ordered it, and it would be delivered. I felt a little disappointed. Then everyone started asking what I had received. The only way I could sum it up was as an 'IOU'. After saying those words, I felt the sadness. That feeling of being left out. The odd ball. Then they all went to the next person. After everyone’s excitement with each others gifts, I felt just awful.
It felt wrong to feel bad, but I really didn't know what to do. That's when my husband handing me his gift. It reminded me of what he said, about having something to open. It hit me. He knew. He didn't say anything and he knew. That hurt worse than the incident itself. At least if I had known, I would have prepared myself. Or bought the darn thing myself. I felt completely embarrassed. I have never truly felt accepted by his family. Now I feel ever more like an outsider. After all the cooking, and baking, and stockings (Oh yeah, I hang and fill stockings for whoever sleeps in the house on Christmas Eve. This year there were 9). I could feel the tears. So I packed up everything as fast as I could. We got in the car and I cried all the way home.
Obviously, I'm pregnant. Uncontrollable emotions come along with. Every feeling I have just comes out.
The days that followed were equally up and down. I couldn't shake those feelings. I cried most of Friday as well. Maybe once I actually receive it in the mail, I will feel better. I'm not really sure. Maybe I am being selfish, but it's not the gift itself that I'm so upset about. It's remembering that feeling, sitting in that small room, everyone looking at me, and I have to show them a piece of paper. Or maybe it's the sigh from my sister in-law that she made after I said what I got. Or the look of my mother-in-law's face as she read the note for herself because I couldn't bare to read it in front of all of them.
This has been eating inside me for days. It feels so good to just get it out.
