This is Me Heading onto the Chaotic Holiday Storm

The phrase “holidays” is a trauma trigger for me. Spend this many years on life’s holiday production staff and shit will happen. With that many moving parts, some sort of system, communication, or technical breakdown and failure is inevitable. Additionally, in 2024, this “most wonderful time of the year” is dirtied by the politics of the just passed US election season. I’ve upped my duloxetine dosage.

Thanksgiving Thursday was preceded by a Tuesday, a day on which I had all sorts of food prep happening all day. I made the cornbread for my stuffing, the pie dough, and the turkey stock which involved baking turkey wings and legs and then boiling them for hours.

The very last thing I did that evening was strain the bits from the broth and then transfer my stock to a metal bowl with a plastic fitted lid into the refrigerator. And then Fiona opened the fridge, and that stock crashed to the floor and spread out into an unusable puddle within two seconds.

I F-bombed several times and immediately made sure Fiona knew it wasn’t her fault. Then I asked her to leave me alone with my grief and I sobbed as I mopped up my fabulous turkey stock up off the floor, nearly slipping on the fat and thinking that would be a fine outcome, me bashing my head on the counter. And when I’d cried out all my election grief, I called Mark in to tell him what had happened. He began to tell me how to fix it and I asked him to please there, put his arm around me, and feel really sorry for me.

And the next morning, I went to the Aldi, bought everything I needed again, and spent the day remaking the stock while continuing the feast preparations. Because, Whaddya Gonna Do? Still grateful the dishwasher had happily just been fixed the day before. As in everyday life, joy and grief intermingle in the holidays as well.

I feel like I’ve spent a lifetime awaiting disaster and feeling dread. And I’m tired out by the horrid tax this takes out of my joy. I spent periods of depression and angst in which I may have been creating my own traumas. I now put all my effort into my Joy! If no one told you, the point of life is to enjoy yourself.

And the happier and more grateful you are when the inevitable disasters hit, the better able you are to make the best choice to recover at the moment and reframe what it truly means on the grander scheme of things. I chose to believe in a world that has the best intentions for me. And that little snaffus are how we appreciate our grace even more.