I'll Be Home For Christmas

In many ways, Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year.

I'm not immune to the magic of Christmas. To the way Princes Street gardens glows with the lights and bustle of the Christmas market that takes over what was once a reasonably large loch every year.
To the excitement of children as they wait for Santa to come. To the stress of hurried shoppers as they try and find the perfect gift for the perfect person.

For some of December, I embrace it.

I love the challenge of finding presents that perfectly relate to whoever I'm buying them for and I love seeing twinkling lights and fir trees everywhere.

But as it gets closer to Christmas Day, I tend to retreat into a little bubble of just me.
I need to be alone and left to my own devices as much as possible.

It wasn't always this way.

Growing up, Christmas was the most magical experience.
Nanny and I would put our Christmas tree up in either the hall or the front room (the front room had an amazing bay window that was the perfect place for our Christmas tree) and we'd spend a couple of hours together decorating it.

I stopped spending Christmas at my mum's, officially, when I was about ten years old.
Before that I'd alternate but, seeing as I'd moved in with nanny the year before, I decided to stay at home for each Christmas after that.

And I loved it.

We'd get up early, later as I got older, and we'd go through to the living room and I'd open my presents from Santa while nanny sat with a cup of tea on the couch. Our dog and later our cat, would often be at her feet.

A few hours later, mum and Jordana would come over with more presents and we'd open them, nanny collecting the wrapping paper to put into a bag as we did so.

After that, we'd have a Christmas dinner of chicken, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, gravy, vegetables and stuffing.

When Jordana and mum had left, nanny and I would sit in our living room and watch Christmas TV with hot chocolates.

It was perfect.

Low key and quiet and ours.

When she died, my version of Christmas died with her.

That first Christmas, in 2016, I was so wrapped up in my own heartbreak that I don't even remember it.
The only bit I do remember is crying so much.
When asked about that time, my mum told me it was like I was 'in a trance' and I now compare it to the Adam Sandler film Click when he puts himself on autopilot to skip through parts of his life.
I was there but I don't remember it and I wasn't 'me'.

For Christmas 2017, I decided to take some control as there was no way I was letting myself spend another Christmas crying the whole time.
I booked flights to and from Spain and decided to spend it with my auntie.
It was an exciting holiday.
We got into a car crash (apparently, the Spanish aren't the best at driving in fog) and I spend most of my week there dealing with a headache but my auntie tried hard to make it Christmassy and we had a delicious yule log type thing for dessert.

It was less painful but it also just proved that distraction only works for a small amount of time.

In 2018, I was back at my mum's and it was nice.
We baked together, there was family drama and I got home for about eightish.

This Christmas, I feel odd.

I have a boyfriend for the first time ever (wow, I really sound like Bridget Jones right now...) who is away skiing in the French Alps so I can hide my pain from him, which is good.
I have incredible friends, less than last year but they're extremely important.
My relationship with my mother has never been better.
I'm jobless but I have opportunities coming up in the new year which are exciting.

In general, everything has changed and nothing is the same.

Except for my feelings about Christmas.

At a time of year when everyone is heading home for the holidays or going to spend time with family, I miss my home more than ever.

I can't go home. I can't curl up on my couch with nanny, our pets at our feet.

The family I grew up with no longer exists and while our homes are still there, someone else lives in them now, making memories of their own.

I know how depressing that sounds but it's true.

Nothing I've said isn't a fact.

When nanny died, my family died with her.

As much as I love mum and the small family I do have left, nothing will ever be me and nanny and our Christmas traditions.

What I did like this year was making some new ones.

My boyfriend and I made a Christmas dinner which included chicken (from my childhood) and prawn cocktail (something from his as he would be having a fancy dinner in the French Alps for Christmas).
We exchanged presents and had hot chocolate and I was extremely grateful for those memories.
I hope we can do the same next year.

But grief is a funny thing. It creeps up on you, even when you've been expecting it.

This year, I'm taking advantage of my lack of a job and enjoying my time alone.
If I can't be with nanny, I'd rather deal with my grief privately and in my own way.

Of course, I'll head over to mum's on Christmas Day and I'll be back before the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.

But until then, instead of being wrapped up in family and traditions, I'll be relaxing on my own and acting as if Christmas isn't happening at all.

I know how depressing this sounds but it's just what Christmas has become for me and that's okay.

In a few years, I might have a fiancé or a husband or children to spend it with but for now I'm okay dealing with it in my own way.

Christmas is hard for so many people and this is my way of coping.

I hope anyone else missing a family member this season is okay.

I truly believe that one day, 'I'll be home for Christmas' will truly mean I'm going home and to somewhere I feel safe and happy and loved.

Grief and life changing events take time and I'm still young so I'm okay with waiting a little while.

Who knows where I'll be next year?

Hopefully, somewhere magical and a little less sad.

Jessica

Bad Decisions? That's alright...

Welcome to my silly life...

It's been a minute (okay, several thousand minutes...) since I wrote here. 

So much has happened in the last year that I can barely believe it. 

I have...

- Left the job I loved for a more mature career in the financial sector
- Took a pay cut for that job that I ultimately ended up hating
- Dated a bit of a dick who I ended things with quickly (but not quite quickly enough)
- Started writing three books and I've got ideas for others
- Left the aforementioned job in the financial sector for a job that sounded incredible but actually turned out to be a scam
- Become unemployed because my mental state couldn't quite take standing outside for seven hours in the cold just in case I made a sale... 

So yeah, it's been quite a year! 

In 2018, I was amazing with my money. I budgeted, I saved, I bought a Macbook. 

I was so proud of myself. 

In 2019, the pay cut and the addition of a car into my life meant a lack of money and new worries that I really struggled with. 

In 2020, I'm hoping to get my life back on track but the lack of a job a month and a half before January is worrying me. 

It's not all bad though. 

I have an incredible boyfriend and wonderful friends who are supporting me in any way that they can at the moment. 

If I'm being entirely honest, they're the only reasons I'm getting through this. 

I mean, I say this. 

I have been officially unemployed for two days. 

That's not very long but it's enough to be driving me insane. 

The worst part is that there's so much I'm afraid/embarrassed to talk to my closest friends and family about. 

I'm embarrassed I made a really stupid decision and took a job I would end up having to leave due to how awful it was (seriously, it was advertised as an amazing opportunity to be a sales and events management trainee but it was actually just a trick which ended up being more like unpaid labour... Okay, it was exactly like that. You go into their office for 7:30am, spend the morning practicing your 'pitch' (which was really just a script to entice people to buy into whatever you were selling), leave the office in groups of three for about 11:30am, go to wherever you've been sent (I was sent to the freezing cold main street in Portobello), spend the next six hours there trying to get as many people to talk to you/buy into the thing you've been assigned to sell before heading back for 6:30pm - 7pm for a debrief. 
I didn't make a single sale (only one of our group of three did) and it was then that I realised that you only got paid if you did make a sale...

After I found that out, it was pretty hard to find the willpower to continue.

I had to walk away because I was so close to having a panic attack at the realisation that I'd just given up a job that paid me consistently every month for one that would pay me if I forced people into signing up for a direct debit for a charity I'd never heard of. 

I'd been semi led to believe that there would be some sort of base wage. 

I was wrong. 
So. Wrong. 

The next day, I went in for about an hour and then I said I had a headache and I left. 

I got in my car and started driving towards my mum's but she didn't answer so I headed to one of my best friend's flat. 

I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid. 

That night, my boyfriend came over and he was so good to me (he has continued to be so incredibly kind to me despite how sarcastic he usually is) but it wasn't enough to curb my anxiety and I couldn't face going in the next day so I texted my 'mentor' and said I was ill again. 

On Monday (yesterday), I quit. 

I told him I needed a job that would be guaranteed to pay me every month instead of one where I stood outside in the freezing cold for several hours without any guarantee I would get paid. 

He accepted it but told me he was 'sorry I saw it that way'. 

I didn't know what other way there was to see it. 

Since last Thursday (when I left with a headache...), I have been frantically applying for jobs. 

I have maybe three weeks before I'm going to seriously worry about money so I'm desperately hoping I'll find something soon.

As for why I'm embarrassed? 

I made this decision. I got myself into this mess. 

I can't blame anyone else but myself for this. 

And, if I'm being completely honest, if I let myself think about it for too long, I probably will have a mental breakdown. 

So why am I writing this all down here? 

This blog has always been where I've come to with intense feelings. 

I wrote here when my mum (nanny) died. 

I wrote here when my cat died.

I wrote here when I was happy too. 

One day, hopefully one not too far away from today, I will look back on this experience as a mistake that I overcame. 

I don't want to forget how massively I messed up or how devastated I was at the result of my actions 

You can't ignore the mistakes you made but nobody ever learned from having continued successes. 

This was a horrendously bad decision that I made but it was a failure I am going to learn from and come out on the other side wiser from it. 

I know that. 

Now, the other thing that I'm too scared to talk about with my friends... 

My boyfriend is brilliant. 

He is smart, successful and he is miles ahead of me in the game of life (that saying 'Don't compare your Chapter 3 to someone else's Chapter 13' comes into my head whenever I think this). 
He wants to be with someone who is equally successful and I'm miles away from being that person. 

Now, it's been years since I was that girl who thought she knew what love was and who didn't believe she was good enough for the boy she wasted that 'love' on. 

But my boyfriend is so unbelievably brilliant that I oftentimes find myself wondering why he's still choosing me every day. 

He's there when I'm at my lowest and he comes over to be with me when I'm struggling. 
He makes me laugh and roll my eyes (often in the same sentence...). 
He's not perfect but he makes up for his mistakes without me asking him to and he always comes through for me without thinking I'm crazy. 

I'm not saying I'm not good enough for him because that's not fair on me and all the work I've done in the last couple of years to improve my opinion on myself. 

I'm just worried. I don't think I've ever been this scared of messing something up. 

Anyway... 

That's just my life at the moment. 

Honest, raw and completely a mess. 

But I'll fix it. 

I have to. 

Love, 
Jess
xoxo