Happy Holidays

The official part of Christmas is over – visiting relatives left, the big dinner is eaten, all the presents are exchanged. And for the first time in many years it was a really happy holiday for me: neither did the stress prior to Christmas Eve get too much to handle, nor did anything happen which threw me off balance during the celebration.

It was the first time my parents would officially have my husband over; they had met before, but never longer than for just a few minutes. Since my parents do not speak English and he does not know enough German yet, they cannot really talk without a translator, which is part of the reason why this was only happening now, but in the end it went really well.
My niece, who comes to visit us quite often and is not bothered by the limitations of her school-English, helped bridge the first few minutes of shyness, and my former brother-in-law can converse in English as well (my sister had it in school for a couple of years, but never became an actual active speaker), so there were no awkward silences. That was what I had worried about the most;  I knew everyone would be friendly and civil to one another, but was afraid that it might turn into a strenuous affair. And while for my husband it was all about meeting people he did not really know and wanting to leave a good impression, it was also an unusual and new situation for me because I never before brought any girl- or boyfriend over to meet my parents, ever! Fortunately, the whole evening was a success.

We’d spent the morning running errands, and in the afternoon my sister, her ex-husband, my husband and I went to watch my niece in a nativity play. None of us is religious and I personally have strong reservations towards the Catholic Church as an organisation, but it was only a lay-service for the neighbourhood and my niece loves playing theatre, and in years past it also proved a good opportunity to get out of my mother’s feet for a while. This year, she barked a bit, but did not bite anyone.
Afterwards, I went to help with the preparations for dinner. On the menu were: freshly squeezed mandarin-orange juice with lemon balm leaves as starter; coronation chicken as first course; the main course was pork filet with Roquefort-sauce, potato gratin and French beans; as dessert we had banoffee pie – all home-made. (For any British reader this might sound somewhat ordinary, but I can assure you that for Germans, there’s an exotic element to most of these dishes as they are not common here at all.) At five o’ clock everything was ready and I went to change into nicer attire and to get my husband.
Since in Germany presents are traditionally exchanged in the evening of December the 24th, we took a break after the main course. My niece was the only child of the group and she likes to draw out the whole ceremony to keep the thrill of suspension alive, so in my family one gift at a time gets unwrapped, meaning that it takes at least an hour until everyone’s finished. My husband and I mainly got practical presents, but given our age and financial situation, we could really appreciate them. Eventually, we returned to the dining table for dessert, and finally just sat together on the sofa for talking and watching my niece try out her presents. At nine o’ clock, we bid the rest adieu: mainly because the cheese-based sauce made my lactose intolerance kick in, but also because I felt that after four hours, my husband could use a break.

On Christmas Day, my aunt and grandmother came over for coffee in the afternoon (to my parents’, that is), and with their departure, the official part of Christmas ended. December 25th and 26th are both public holidays in Germany, and in my family, the latter is reserved for laziness. You sleep in, eat leftovers or meals which do not require a lot of preparation, go for a walk to get some fresh air and a little bit of exercise for your legs (mine start hurting if I sit around too much – they get rather stiff quickly as a result of my inability to relax physically), and otherwise do whatever you want: watch TV, read, play a computer game… Considering the fact that I need a lot more time for recharging my batteries than the average person does, I really appreciate this opportunity for relaxation after a busy and exciting start into the holidays.

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December News: A Short Overview

Sometimes, there are some smaller events which fit into the blog, but don’t warrant a post of their own. Or topics where I don’t want to go into a full analysis right now because that would depress me, but which I might like to come back to later. This blog entry is a collection of such “news snippets” and comments, and I am planning to make use of the feature in the future as well.

1.) Integration Class: When my husband was granted a residency permit for three years in June, it was under the requisite that he attended integration class for learning German. The first vacancy in such a class in our home town was in December: given our financially restrained situation, a different location was no option as the costs for public transportation would have bitten a serious chunk out of our budget. So we had a lot of time to bide just waiting for December to roll around.
On the morning of the big day, he left for class, only to be back home an hour later – the course had been moved to the end of January due to problems with the class rooms available. So that meant waiting for another seven weeks, and on top of that, we had not even gotten the letter informing us about this the week before. Especially my husband was deeply disappointed; he had looked forward to finally getting started after so many months of waiting.

2.) Christmas Party: I attended the Christmas party at the library where I used to work until February 2011. Last year I chickened out of going at the last minute, blaming it on an uni test (which we really had, but it didn’t interfere with the party). This year, however, I was determined to go, and it turned out really nice.

3.) Class Reunion: Just before Christmas, there’s the annual class reunion of my school; basically consisting of having drinks at some pub and catching up with who’s doing what. The last time I attended was in 2009 for the tenth anniversary of leaving school, which proved the kickstart for an episode of major depression that led straight to the panic attacks of June 2010 and consequently to antidepressants and psychotherapy. (So there came something good out of it, eventually.) It made me feel so inferior about myself – labouring around with my university education, a really complicated love life I did not feel like explaining to anyone, and nothing else worth talking about either – while everyone else gave rundowns of their academic credentials and fancy jobs, or not so discreetly flashed chunky engagement rings… It was an experience I have not had any desire to repeat since, especially since hardly any of the people I would like to meet again attend either.
Usually, I’d just ignore the Facebook invites and pretend I hadn’t seen them. This year, however, I felt the desire to actually decline officially. I did not give any reason; I could hardly write the truth (“Most of you are a bunch of phonies and it depresses the shit out of me to see that even the stupidest and those most lacking in positive character traits managed to carve out more of a career than me”). And it’s not so much that I feel ashamed of myself rather than having no desire to share intimate details about my mental health with people I have no contact with otherwise. Maybe by the time the fifteenth anniversary rolls around I’ll give it another try, but for now, I am quite happy to stay at home.

4.) Gastritis: For the last couple of weeks, I have had stomach problems, especially in the late afternoons and evenings. The symptoms match those of gastritis, which I’ve had a couple of times already over the course of the last fifteen years. I didn’t even see a doctor for it, because the advice they give is always the same: stick to rice and apples and drink lots of tea until the symptoms go away. Antacids are not covered by the health insurance in such a case either.
It’s stress-related anyway in my case, and when it did not go away by itself, I switched to a somewhat restrictive vegetarian diet for the last couple of days: apples, bananas, rice, pasta, bread, potatoes, legumes, corn, vegetables. No meat, fish or poultry, no eggs, no coffee, no hot spices, no berries, no citric fruit, very small quantities of dairy products only (which I have to be careful about due to my latent lactose intolerance anyway). It helped a lot, but tonight I’ll try to steer off that list with small portions of the “forbidden foods”, because I start missing them.

You Better Watch Out, You Better Not Cry…

Christmas usually is an especially difficult time of the year when it comes to family relationships. The stress prior to the actual holidays brings out the extremes in our behaviour. My mother regularly explodes on December 23rd because she has problems delegating tasks, but gets overwhelmed by the load and vents her frustration and stress violently…

Thursday, December 22nd

Twelve minutes into Christmas break on the way home from university, I slipped on the escalator leading down to the tram station and twisted my right leg, while simultaneously tearing my left arm (which was still grasping the handrail). I could still walk, but only with a heavy limp, and had to have my sister pick me up from the tram station in my home town so she could carry my bag.
Over the course of the evening, I got rather upset because while my mother was rather worried, it was over the fact whether I would be able to drive her and my grandmother to the supermarket the next morning, and she didn’t express any concern regarding the pain I might feel. Functionality trumps pain – her problem with my depression was that I didn’t function anymore, too. Now that I appear functional again, my feelings become secondary once more.

Friday, December 23rd

At 9.30 in the morning, I found myself at an overcrowded supermarket. Finding empty space in the parking lot had already been a challenge, especially since my grandmother uses a rollator walking aid and wants to park as close to the entrance door as possible. The situation inside was worse rather than better.
With the need to pull myself together for uni temporarily suspended, my mood had started tumbling down quickly, and the longer we were inside the grocery store, the worse I felt. My swollen foot pulsated with pain and the constant bickering between my mother and grandmother – who were both affected by the general atmosphere as well – grated on my nerves.
After about half an hour, it took a really insignificant event only to push me over the edge: I was waiting for my grandmother to finish her business in the butcher’s section and just biding my time, when suddenly I felt the gaze of a middle-aged man on me. As he noticed that I caught him looking at me, he winked at me. No idea why it upset me, but it did. I wanted to yell at him to stop looking or winking at me.
I hid in the only empty aisle I could find and actually started crying. Because of the limping, I was always behind my mother and grandmother anyway, so nobody missed me, but in order to not rouse suspicion, I couldn’t stay there for long. Managing to pull myself together until it was time to queue at the check out, where people were standing in long lines already, I excused myself and went to wait in the car: officially to rest my foot, but really for calming down. I switched the radio on and concentrated on the music, so that by the time my mother and grandmother had finished their shopping, I had regained my composure.
In the late afternoon, I got once again into my mother’s crossfire when she repeated her threat that I had to move out if I didn’t get a student loan, which caused me lots of anxiety again.

Saturday, December 24th

Christmas Eve is the main event of the festivities in Germany, with big family dinners and the exchange of presents in the evening, and it started even worse than the previous day for me. I was already crying in the shower, with no clue how I was supposed to get through the day, and poured it all into an email to my boyfriend, which I felt guilty for later – waking up to your girlfriend’s hysterics doesn’t make for the most relaxed Christmas either. (He was utterly lovely about it, though.) Somehow I managed to dry my tears and leave, though, so I could help my mother with the preparations for dinner, but what happened then took me by surprise:
The conversation turned to my 10-years-old niece, who had exhibited rather ill-spirited moods that morning too. I remarked that I’d occasionally wondered if she didn’t suffer from the same condition as I do, but had never said anything because that was a hunch rather than something I could back up with solid facts. And that’s the truth – there are certain gazes or the way she holds her head or looks at people that feel utterly familiar to me, like the seed of all that avoidant behaviour, but I cannot present any evidence.
My mother nodded, then asked: “Where does this come from? Is it me?” (My mother looks after my niece when she isn’t in school.) I was completely flabbergasted and utterly at a loss. There are basically three reasons which cause chronic depression: 1.) genetic predisposition – which I certainly have from both sides of the family; 2.) neglect in infancy and childhood – which I can exclude for myself; 3.) repeated experiences of helplessness over long periods of time, concerning “significant others” like parents or other very close family members – which is very much the case with me. I had never told her what caused my chronic depression, because that’s simply too damn difficult a task – I don’t want to hurt my parents, because I know they had to endure a lot worse from their parents and never had a chance to not become slightly messed up either, but I could name dozens of situations that led to me becoming depressed and developing patterns of avoidance. My mother probably noticed that I was looking for the right words a little too long, and when I finally answered, it was just the three points mentioned above without connecting them to any personal experiences.
This was the worst time possible for this conversational topic to come up; on a different day, I might actually have welcomed the chance for broadening this point with her, but NOT ON CHRISTMAS EVE…
Myself, I started feeling better in the afternoon and got through the evening ok. We had all agreed to not buy any presents for each other because money is tight, so the big emotional climax was missing, but at least nobody fussed about it and I wasn’t reminded to get a job either…

Sunday, December 25th

I slept like a stone, until noon almost. The day was quiet, but pleasant. In the afternoon we went to see my grandmother and aunt, and in the evening I met one of my school friends who is home for Christmas. I didn’t feel like crying.

Monday, December 26th

Boxing Day is a national holiday too in Germany and at least in my family entirely dedicated to laziness. This year was in so far unusual as the family had a bowling tournament with Wii Sports – my mother isn’t much of a computer user and doesn’t even have an email address, while the rare behaviour for my father was to actually come out of his office for a family activity. So it was rather strange to see them playing a console game, but I really enjoyed the whole enterprise!

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So that was my Christmas, in a nutshell. In a little while I’m leaving for meeting another friend; I’m trying to fill the days with pleasant and diverse activities, so that my depression index goes down again and I will be fit for the last month of uni and exams once Christmas break is over, because if I learned one ting in therapy, it is that you must “fake it until you make it”.