This Christmas in many ways has been great, but it didn’t come without its complexities. One of mine this year has been about integrating my sons girlfriend into my life in a different way, and also assuming a new role to my parents.
So my son and his girlfriend came for Christmas this year, and stayed with me. It’s a first in a way. She stayed a few times in the larger family house, but this time it was in my house, my smaller house. I guess what it bought up for me is how ritualistic I have become in my way of living and how difficult it was to let go of some on these things. I don’t know or not is she was judging me for watching Netflix at 8 am in the morning, still in my dressing gown, the washing up unfinished, the dog not walked. It took me three years after my divorce to get top a stage where this was ok, but here again I was feeling guilty that my house wasn’t perfect or my makeup wasn’t on. I rattled with feelings of shame at not being perfect, which funnily enough I don’t feel when my just my sons there. I also spent an inordinate amount of time wondering if she was happy?
I need to acknowledge just how difficult it must have been for her to see intimately inside a (dysfunctional family) at times, functioning in the only way we know how to! I am sure she has her own dysfunction within her family but it must of been a strain watching our and thinking “what the bloody hell am I getting myself in to?”. My hope is that we can both learn from going forward, me being more sensitive to her and perhaps her realising that we are different from her family, not better not worse just different. I am thankful for the glue that is my son, who is only aware of the tension when the dog decides to sit on his non dog friendly girlfriend thinking that he is lap dog when in fact he is an over fed Labrador.
But the conundrum that sits under this for me is how safe is it to be me and perhaps just below this – who am I? Now I know that we don’t fully show ourselves to all people. But my home space is different I guess, it where I like to be me. When someone who is different is in that space, how OK is it to be the you that you need to be? I guess I wasn’t sure what I needed from the holiday period. On some level I needed my family around me, but I think that I didn’t need need to play ‘mother’. It has been perhaps the first time that I have felt that.
Another newness is that we went to my parents to cook dinner. My mum no longer able to cook in the way she would (damn dementia), so the idea was to cook for them in their house. I guess I went into mum mode here, but mum to my mum, rather than just my kids.
So getting back to the title, not sure I did very well with looking after my needs this Christmas, as well as looking after everyone else’s, but that might be because I am not sure who I am in my family any more, it all shifted a bit. And maybe it will continue to …
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