Merry Christmas, please don't make me come home

I’ll sit arms length from you for the rest of my life, but all I’ve ever wanted for Christmas was for you to hug me.

There’s a cold sun clinging to the sky in the early afternoon recently, brighter it seems than last year or the year before, but despite this the Uncomfortable Christmas Ache has crept its way under my skin earlier than usual this year. Like a distant relative you’re never quite sure how to greet at the annual family reunion; excited at first to see someone again who has known you for so long, breathing in a vaguely familiar scent as you hug them hello before stepping back and swallowing the sinking feeling that beyond your designated calendared duties, this person really knows nothing about you at all, and you wouldn’t even know how to go about explaining who you are.

I get it every year, naturally, but to have it so apparent by November 1st feels like a bit of a cruel joke. Christkindl, I am sure, is watching bemused from his place in the North Pole, or Jerusalem, or children’s books, or the back of my mind, as I write the same lists over and over in a feeble attempt at control. Gifts - mum, stepdad, brother, cousin- recycling bin piling high with ripped notes, ill-measured wrapping paper, gift receipts I’ll pretend to have lost.

Something about Christmas seems to always just narrowly pass over my head. No countdowns, no classics. I had school, and then I didn’t, and then it was Christmas Day, quiet and pleasant enough and short, and then I had school again. Gifts made me uncomfortable, knowing there was a way I was supposed to react, not knowing what it was, guessing wrong each time. At age 8, a suitcase, so I could stop taking my belongings to my father’s in plastic bags on weekends. An instructional book on how to be happy at age 13 (the quick rush of relief, the sudden rare closeness, upon realising you could tell I wasn’t). Gifts you knew I already had, announcing you’d keep it for yourself instead when you asked why I wasn’t excited. Ungrateful child, ruining the day. Two hours of uncomfortable small talk and misplaced laughter spread thinly through a day where you could see the sun for 30 minutes. The safety of my cold room at the end of the evening, knowing it was over.

Even as a child, sitting still on the sofa, eyeing the glass baubles imprisoning fake snow, I couldn’t quite grasp the concept. A single snowflake, grabbed haphazardly from its path, turning to water in my tiny palm before I could make out its arms and ribs. Something unique. Something special. Unread, pooling into the crevices of my handprint before I could make out a limb.

My throat tightened as I watched you wrap the tinsel around the tree, keeping a metres distance as to not get my grubby little fingerprints on them. The fact of my hands being dry and cracking from standing alone on the bath to reach into the sink, washing and re-washing them, of course being lost on everyone in the room. My fingerprints had nothing to do with hygiene, but with my age. I was a child; tainted, contaminated. We never addressed what with. Though as I grow, and our conversations mellow, I think really I was just sticky with youth.

Your son would come into the room as you’d finish with the last glass baubles. The anticipation I had felt slowly rising from my gut was at the back of my throat now, and I’d greet him with the first words I’d spoken in hours. It was finally time; my favourite tradition, the only part I really understood. I unwrapped two gift-shaped tree decorations, rainbowed and sequined, handed one to him, and turned back to fold the tissue paper. I hate these, you’d grimace. Tacky. I mouthed along, lyrics to my favourite carol. Hang them wherever you want. We stood back together, watching as your son hung it front and centre, the tree suddenly glinting with cheap plastic sparkles. Your mouth contorted downwards for a moment and I felt it in my intestines: triumph, excitement, anxiety, like reading an exam question and knowing you have the right answer. It was my turn. Slinking behind the tree and sitting on the floor, I wrapped the thread carefully around one of the lowest branches. You could find my mark only if you searched for it. A faint smile, a slight nod. First place. When I woke up the next day, your son’s tacky bauble hung quietly above mine. I’ve never asked him if he noticed, but we followed the same routine every year. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he knew something I didn’t. You always said he was your favourite, after all.

I’m older now, and the festivities look a little different. I enlist a roommate to help carry a tree, steal oranges from work and bake them for cheap decorations, fill my home with cinnamon and citrus and a warmth that drains my bank account. Price well paid, even if my skin stays littered with goosebumps. Moving out (we can keep saying I moved out, it’s okay) gave us both space to breathe. I wash my own clothes and I shower on my own time. At Christmas, I unwrap my gift-shaped decoration and let the colours glint in the middle of the tree. Sometimes I wake up and bake shortbread on a whim, flour dusting the counters. My own white Christmas. I draw a smiley face in the residue, ignoring the way my stomach will trace your face contorting downwards. You’re less tense, now you’re away from my sticky fingerprints. My hands don’t feel as heavy, now that I’ve stopped reaching for you.

My first Christmas living away from you, I told you I had covid. A self-fulfilling prophecy. I remember how it felt, realising I could lie, that I’d get away with it too. Excitement and anxiety once again curling up my spine, swirling through my stomach, but it was my own triumph this time, realising it could be different. That being contaminated could work in my favour. One lie I’d never apologise for. I remember standing alone in my basement flat with your eyes boring into the back of my head as I doctored a positive test to show you, picturing my roommates curled by their family trees in their childhood homes. We exchanged gifts on my doorstep on Christmas Eve, three feet apart. Hello, merry Christmas, goodbye. Thank you. When you left I sat on the other side of the door and cried, my bed that night exceptionally large, or maybe I was exceptionally small. The next day, I kept the lights off, sat in the dark until it was time to sleep again. Christmas Day, 2023; a day of mourning. Grieving who I could have been were you less afraid of what I’d contaminate you with at 5 years old. Christmas Day, 2023; when I first realised you couldn’t be what I needed, something I’ve since wriggled into a steady headlock with. That day in the dark, I sat next to a little girl with quietly bleeding hands and rubbed ointment on her knuckles. I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, and gave her a hug when she told me.

This will be my third Christmas living away from you, though it feels longer. I’ve handmade your gift as I do every year, love and edges and questions and The Cranberries in the car stabbed desperately into the fabric. A careful little creature for you to look at and who won’t talk back. I don’t want to give it to you, as I don’t every year. Of course you’ll like it - your daughter made it. How thoughtful. Grateful child, finally putting the effort back in. But its eyes are wonky and the fur is patchy and I can’t see anything else. You will like it, I know you will, but I know you’ll notice it too - the way it looks in different directions like it’s searching for an escape route from your sterile home. These are my hands now and I am in control of them, but somehow nothing I make turns out the way I want it to. My mother’s daughter in the glint of the needle, our shared DNA in the fabric. I picture the creature, sitting alone, surrounded by the black walls and white carpets of your new living room, and I feel the need to apologise. Please don’t ask me what I want for Christmas. Have I created something sad again?

It’s December 1st now, and my boyfriend’s mum has already bought me a present for the 25th. I’ll wake up there this time. Will you tell me how that makes you feel, mum? Your daughter waking up at another family’s house on Christmas Day? Would you mind? Would you tell me if you did? Maybe I wouldn’t go, if you told me you minded. Maybe if you told me you wanted to wake up with your daughter on Christmas morning, I’d stay the night at yours. Maybe I’d wake up early and lay outside your bedroom door again, cheek pressed into the carpet, searching through the crack under the door for a sign of life. Maybe we’d sit at your dining table in the morning with a latte like we did when I was 10 before we went to an appointment. Maybe the silence wouldn’t feel so thick. Maybe it wouldn’t feel like drowning.

His mum asks me to add to the family’s Christmas food list, anything I want, anything to make me feel at home. I watch him and his siblings add to it, excited, joyful, watch a parent’s insatiable appetite to make them happy, and I can’t think of a single thing I’d want. Swallow the urge to say whatever is easiest, please, thank you. Nod with a little laugh when my boyfriend tells me I don’t have to be so formal, that I’m family too now. Press my tongue to the roof of my mouth and blink away the feeling of my skin heating up. I open the doors to the advent calendar she bought me, consider crying as the chocolate melts on my tongue, unmoving. For once I wish my body to be colder, to slow down the process, to keep the taste in my mouth, holding on to the concept of maternal warmth, willing it to feel like it belonged to me. I’m buying everyone in his family gifts now, desperate for them to see how much this means to me, and I can feel your contorted smirk when I pick each item up in the shop. Weird, overbearing, too intimate. You don’t know them like that. They’re not your family. Intrusive! But I’ve been texting his mum more than my own, so what do you know? And if I study your smirk, mum, if I hold your gaze, then I can see it, just for a moment; jealousy, desperation, grief. Everything I saw on my own face at 7 years old when I’d lock myself in the bathroom, you and your son laughing outside the door. But I’m only imagining your face, really. Picturing what I want you to feel - is that cruel? I’ve seen it on you before, once, when you saw my tattoo of my aunt’s handwriting. Loving you every last little bit and forever more. You asked me why I didn’t have a tattoo for you, and I bit my tongue so as to not cry out how quickly I would if you’d only say something similar.

I’m excited about being there for Christmas. One hand on my glass, the other in the hand of my love, or just still on my lap. Maybe I’ll spill my drink, and his little sister will laugh, and maybe it could end there - no disaster, no panic. I won’t be disgusting for making a mess. There won’t be any tests, either - maybe a gift will just be a gift. Christmas because it’s fun, not because we’re supposed to. Is that how it’s meant to happen?

My brother is leaving early on Christmas day to see his new girlfriend, you announce in a text. I read the snarky comment in the white between the words, think back to three weeks ago in the pub on the hill, shrouded with darkness and rain, restlessness seeping through his uncomfortably rigid limbs, forming plans together on how best to avoid the long silences filled with weakly festive television and anxious swallows of air. How best to leave as quickly as possible without you twisting the knife in further. Ungrateful child. But Christmas sounds easier this year, since I’ll only see you for a few hours. We can do that, yeah? Just a few hours. Any longer and I think I’d choke, feeling the words tickle the back of my throat like a cough I just can’t keep down. I know you feel it; the way we both circle around the fact like starving lions circling a meal, both getting closer and closer, never quite jumping. Something is wrong with us, mum. Who’s fault is it? But a few hours, we could do. You can have an edible and I’ll be quiet and we’ll be together just long enough to patch a hole over the emptiness we both feel when someone mentions family. We can eat our dinner in silence, elbows off the table, fork and knife. Mouth closed, back straight. Posture, darling. The farthest thing from animals we could be. I am 21 now, but at your dining table I will always ask for your help cutting the meat. I’ll hold my glass with both hands. I know my place, mum, at the other end of your table, forever 14. Arms length, out of reach. Uncontaminated.

I’ve been walking around holding the hand of a little girl with quietly bleeding knuckles. We’ve both got heads full of the right things to say, do, eat. We know just how to take up as little space as possible, to stay at the other end of the table. But everyone else who loves me has only asked for me to sit closer. So what did you teach me all this for, mum? I’ll sit arms length from you for the rest of my life, but all I’ve ever wanted for Christmas was for you to hug me.