Insight: I prefer to spend Christmas alone after years of feeling excluded (BSL)

When I tell people that I usually spend Christmas Day alone they often think it’s very sad. But for me it’s a happy alternative to what Christmas used to be like.

Im the only deaf person in a large and quite religious family and most of my childhood Christmases were spent being dragged to midnight mass where I sat clueless to what was being said and then being dragged back to church for another service later on Christmas Day.

My family don’t sign and I’m only grateful that I later went to a deaf school where I picked up sign language and made friends and it was there that I realised I had got the short straw when it came to families.

Don’t get me wrong of course I appreciate my family. But I always thought my friends who had deaf parents had it easier.

Deaf friends would tell me stories about jolly christmases where deaf families gathered and I’d always feel quite jealous.

In my family I was the quiet one. Family members made small talk with me but it was always an effort to understand them and vice versa so communication was kept to a minimum.

I’d be polite for my family’s sake but it came to a point where I started to wonder after I left home, why did I still put myself through the torment of Christmas with all the ignorant relatives.

I grew tired of sitting alone watching television while others chatted or played games and I grew to loathe the Christmas dinner, I’d try to finish my plate as quick as I can and then offer to get started on clearing the kitchen.

I know it’s sad but I’d gotten used to being left out and it just became the norm.

It was the year my great uncle died when I suddenly realised how excluded I was and refused to sit through it all anymore.

We had all gone to my great uncles funeral at the family church and while we were there I remember reading the notes about his life.

I felt like I was reading about someone I didn’t even know! All of these stories about his life that all the family – but me – knew about. I knew nothing about him yet I had sat in a room with him for years and he hadn’t bothered to try to talk to me.

I found the courage to ask my Mother about this and she just brushed my feelings off saying it wasn’t important and of course I knew my Uncle and I hadn’t missed anything.

From then I promised myself that I’d do Christmas differently. I started joining a couple of deaf friends at a gathering on Christmas Eve. We also meet up at a pub on Boxing Day.

On Christmas Day I enjoy my own company since I don’t have a partner and I always enjoy a quiet walk with my two dogs, grateful that I’m not stuck in a room somewhere being ignored.

My friends understand why I don’t go to see family on Christmas Day and as my mother has long since passed there are only cousins and so left, most of which I don’t know anything about and vice versa!

I hope if any of you reading this have suffered a Christmas where you feel ignored or left out by your family, remember you don’t have to keep doing the same things.

This blog has been written anonymously as part of the Insight series – where readers are invited to share their story or news about their interesting job with The Limping Chicken. If you have a story to share please email rebecca@rawithey.com 

Image courtesy of i-stock photos.