The Holidays have never been a big part of my life. I am 7 years younger than my closest sibling. When I was 10, most of my cousins had entered the phase in life where they started having families or were moving into having new traditions. My family went from joining forces with our extended family to moving towards just the nuclear to that falling apart due to illnesses, deaths, and births.

The Holidays were always a time of stress and loneliness. I was so much younger than everyone else and, well, my family seems to love stress and thrive in making everything more stressful. It is a common issue with a lot of people. Family members you rarely see come out of the woodwork. Prolonged family interactions with the added complication of performing traditions ignite any issues sitting under the surface. The Holidays are such a specific and alien part of our lives. Yet, they are deemed necessary to culture.

When I said that I had no plans this holiday, I received two different reactions: concern and apathy. I have an extremely small social circle and it exists primarily online. I have a family but have chosen to limit those connections to controlled experiences for my own reasons and mental health. I had one invitation to go home to my aunt’s. This would require surrounding myself with people that, with what I assume are the best intentions, have been critical and overly bearing in recent years and the one sibling I am close to wasn’t going to be there.

Thus, I spent the Thanksgiving alone, first at said sister’s with her cats and now here in my empty apartment writing this with Queer Eye on the second half of my small computer screen. On a base level, I’m okay with this. It was all a choice. I would have loved to be able to attend a Friendsgiving or have a job that let me be around others. However, this is how I spend a lot of my weekends. Alone, consuming media, attempting to act on my passions, dreading the work I need to do, and hanging out with cats (my roommate has two).

However, this is Thanksgiving. This is a time for family, right? I’m supposed to be eating turkey (I did, I bought a pre-made meal from Sprouts Farmers Market and ate it while watching Smart Guy on Disney+) and getting upset listening to my conservative relatives rant and rave and someone getting stressed about the state of the butter. None of that sounds great but there is something very lonely about telling people “Happy Thanksgiving” as they travel to or are at a function. There is something embarrassing saying I have no plans or will be alone, mostly by choice, and feeling the sadness about my current state by people who just assume I have somewhere to go and eat.

I spent 4 out of the last 5 Thanksgiving without family. One was a Friendsgiving (you usually get invited to those when people know you have no family close by and I was on the East Coast) and 3 with my ex’s family. Last year, I blew into my family’s dinner unannounced after being dumped and having a massive fight with a family member who showed up later that day. I spent most of the day in a haze, angry, getting cornered by well meaning cousin,s and getting asked a lot of questions about my newly single status. And without my mother. It sucked. It felt wrong and fake and…well, I don’t see the great hadoop is with holidays.

Except getting to dress up a little and being around more people than usual (in my case) but damn, they are stressful.

On this Thanksgiving, despite crying after multiple Happy Thanksgivings and feeling a bit sorry for myself, I am thankful that I was able to be alone. I mean, I am thankful that the two family members I associate with understood that I needed to be able to be alone and not guilt me into driving through snow to only guarantee more mental pain than feeling left out. I am thankful that I have a home to come to and some people to wish a “Happy Thanksgiving.” I am thankful that I have something to look forward to even if it is only looking forward. I am thankful that I am able to be here, less depressed than last year with the chance that next year I might have somewhere to go on the fourth Thursday of November.

Not everyone has these things. Not everyone feels the mild disdain I have to The Holidays. Not everyone has a safe place or the ability to find the safe space they need on days like this. I am happy for those that find peace at the end of the year but I will invite you to remember, they aren’t universal. They aren’t experienced the same way by everyone and that is okay. What is important is to reach out to those you care about because that will go over more than obligations.

Be kind to one another. Be kind to yourself. Find some peace and know you are doing what you need to do at this moment in time. Happy Thanksgiving or Happy Fourth Thursday of November 2019, which ever feels better.