Working on acceptance and forgiveness

[AntoniaB]

I talk on the phone to someone in the family every day, yes, already, and I can still do that this week. I wanted to set up a "new" tradition of sorts for Christmas eve so I invited my girlfriend over for a big dinner because I love to cook. She's single too. But then they shifted off the whole "come Christmas eve to come Christmas day." So I'm not avoiding holidays altogether, just portions of it. I admit, yes, I'm trying to avoid rather than work through. I am tired of working through pain. In 6 months I have faced every single thing head on and dealt with it. I am tired. I am just so tired. In all of this I've never retreated into my own world but kept very involved with everyone, and I'm tired of the effort. I have a tremendous amount of research and work to do for school in a few weeks, and I just want to be able to get lost in that stuff. It's not like I want to sit here and bawl all week. I want to be productive. But yes, that productivity is a real escape from the pain.

And I keep thinking why, why can't I just do what I feel I need to do here, if it's escape from it for ONE holiday and substitute with work, why can't I do that? They do not trust that I know what is best for me. None of the people in my family have ever been as close to their H by far as I was to mine. They do not know what I am going through. They cannot. They think that it is "all better" if I'm just around my family but it's not. I have been off anti-depressants for over 2 months now and doing fine, and the stress of these holidays is making me feel like I need to go back on them. That's why I want the holidays to just "go away" in my own mind, and my family is hellbent on not letting that happen.

I don't want to be mean. I know what they have done for me. I don't want to say "the more you push, the more I feel like I have to go back on these pills." But that is honestly what is in my head.