When December and Christmas don't bring Joy


December is supposed to be the soft landing at the end of the year. The deep breath. The reward. Everyone talks about slowing down like it is a gift you unwrap and instantly enjoy.

For me, it is not like that.

December is hard. Christmas is hard. The downtime is hard. And I have stopped pretending it is anything else.

When the year is busy, I cope better. There is a rhythm. A reason to get up. Things to respond to. People who need answers. Even stress has a shape. You can push against it. You can survive it one day at a time.

Then December arrives and everything loosens. Schedules disappear. Noise drops away. People go quiet. And suddenly there is space.

Too much space.

Downtime sounds peaceful if your inner world is calm. If it is not, downtime feels like being locked in a room with your own thoughts and no distraction allowed.

That is when things creep in.

Grief that stayed polite all year suddenly clears its throat. Loneliness that behaved itself now wants a seat at the table. Old memories show up uninvited. The what ifs. The should haves. The quiet disappointments you managed to outrun from January to November.

Christmas makes it louder.

There is a script everyone else seems to know. Be grateful. Be joyful. Be surrounded. Be festive. Be rested. If you are not those things, you start to feel like you are failing at December.

I am tired of that lie.

Christmas can be heavy. It brings up who is missing. What never healed. It asks you to perform happiness right when you are running on empty.

And the stillness. No one warns you about the stillness.

When life slows down, there is nowhere to hide from yourself. No urgent task to justify not feeling okay. No crisis to manage. Just you. Your body. Your mind. Your history.

I find that difficult.

I struggle when days stretch without structure. When time feels loose and unclaimed. When I am meant to relax but my nervous system does not know how. When rest feels like falling instead of landing.

I know part of it is that busyness has been my armour. If I keep moving, I do not have to sit with certain truths. Downtime asks me to sit anyway.

So I feel flat. Or restless. Or oddly sad for no clear reason. Some days I feel nothing at all, which is worse. I scroll. I snack. I sleep badly. I wait for January like it is a rescue boat.

And I feel guilty about it. Because nothing is technically wrong.

That guilt is its own weight.

What I am learning, slowly, is that this does not make me broken or ungrateful. It makes me human. It means I have lived long enough to carry things that do not clock off for the holidays.

So I am trying something different. Not fixing it. Just telling the truth about it.

December is hard for me. Christmas is complicated. Downtime brings things up that I work very hard to keep down. That is not a failure. It is information.

I do not need to force cheer where there is none. I do not need to pretend rest feels good when it does not. I can name the discomfort without turning it into a personal flaw.

Some years, getting through December is enough.

If this time of year feels heavy for you too, you are not doing it wrong. You are just paying attention. And sometimes that is the bravest thing there is.

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