Space

Preparing for a Christmas Party here at our place today and it’s bringing up a lot of memories. Of parties in the past, planned, prepped, put together perfectly, meticulously, at the expense of my mental health and my experience of them. It’s not just the memories of my mind but also of my body. My body remembers the feeling of ‘the morning of’ and the pressure to now put all of the picture perfect plans in place. The feeling of being alone with the responsibility of it all working out and going well and pleasing everyone.

Those feelings and pressures were all mine, were all put on me by me in an attempt to control and create an outcome that I thought was good and acceptable and pleasing enough. Those feelings, back in my body right now are setting off the same old thought patterns too. The windows are dirty, what if you’ve forgotten something, what if you run out of time, what if despite your best efforts everyone has a terrible time and leaves thinking you are useless and a terrible host (insert ‘person’). The difference today is that there is awareness here now. Awareness of where those expectations, emotions and resulting thought patterns come from. Awareness and compassion for the layers of experiences that have absorbed into who I am and how I now experience the world around me in these situations. Awareness, compassion and the ability to step back from those patterns and say ‘No thank you, not today’. It’s been a long time since I’ve said yes to a party like this. Bar kids birthday parties, which I have stretched myself for for obvious (we do these things for our kids) reasons there has been a period of saying no, putting up a boundary in order to rest from the retraumatisation of continuing to try and fail, try and fail, setup for things to be different, hope they will be and then collapse under the same patterns and stories.

I hope the rest has been enough. I feel strong enough, aware enough and different enough now to tackle this. To ignore the windows, to setup and clean up the best I can while being mindful to retain some of my energy for the actual night. To know and trust that the people coming aren’t coming to judge my housekeeping skills, to believe that my worth as a person is not tied to how well I can plan and host a perfect party. There are times when it is possible to create space for things like this, things that feel hard, that drain us, that don’t come naturally. At this time of year and in certain seasons of our lives, the space is so sparse, there isn’t a lot of room for movement. The only space available really that I could give over to the idea of a perfect party is the space I need to be able to enjoy it. It’s the same for Christmas in general, the holiday period and in some respect the years when we are in the thick of raising babies and toddlers. For years I did, I let every last millimetre of space be used for ‘orchestrating’ the image of a good party/Christmas/outing for everyone and gave over the space required for me to experience the joy in any of it. It never felt fun or enjoyable for me because I hadn’t saved any space for that.

I know deep in my bones that my children won’t remember the table decorations when they remember Christmas. They won’t remember if the wrapping paper matched or if the dessert we brought to the family lunch turned out just right. They won’t remember whether the sliding door glass was clear or spotted with water marks.

They will remember how tonight feels.

They will remember how Christmas feels.

They will make meaning of Christmas, the holidays, and spending time with family and friends by how it feels and how it feels for them is so closely linked to how it feels for me.

There needs to be space, valued, saved, dedicated to how it feels because perfectly planned and decorated holiday events that end in exhaustion, overwhelm and everyone banging into their edges and each other is just not worth it, it’s just not the point and it’s just not going to happen here anymore. It’s not possible for me to flow with the big energy and magic of this time of year without space and so space will get its rightful place on the list from now on.

So that I can be a person who is able to say yes again.