The Christmas you get, you deserve

…or not.

I wish you a hopeful Christmas
I wish you a brave New Year
All anguish, pain and sadness
Leave your heart and let your road be clear
They said there’ll be snow at Christmas
They said there’ll be peace on Earth
Hallelujah, Noel, be it heaven or hell
The Christmas you get you deserve

Oh, Greg Lake – you had me right up until that last line. I love that song, it’s so atmospheric and emotive…but I can’t get over “The Christmas you get you deserve”.

I’ll tell you about some of my previous Christmasses and you’ll understand.

Christmas age 11. My best friend had just moved 500 miles away and I was being bullied at school. Being away from school for the holidays didn’t help much, because after just a few months of being insulted every day I had started to hate myself right along with the rest of them. I was seriously depressed – fantasising about suicide, having trouble getting out of bed, unable to find any enthusiasm for life. I would have argued otherwise at the time, but as an adult I can’t see what I could possibly have done to deserve that.

Christmas age 13. I was very depressed, anxious and bordering on psychotic. I frequently worried that my teachers had put electronic bugs on me and were sitting in the staff room, laughing at everything I said. I refused to go into shops because I thought the person at the till would laugh at me for being ugly. I walked with my head down, barely speaking to anyone. Certainly not my parents, although they begged me to tell them what was wrong. No, I deserved everything that the people at school said and did to me, I should just get over myself and stop being pathetic.

Christmas age 14. After a six month period of anorexia over spring and summer I started to binge and got stuck in cycles of restricting for a few weeks, then bingeing for a few weeks, then restricting, and etc. I was cutting myself as well. I went to the Christmas party of an amateur dramatic society I belonged to with my parents, and mum insisted that she wouldn’t eat if I wouldn’t. She caved by dessert. I ate nothing but binged in private later on.

Christmas age 17. The shit had hit the fan during the autumn – I had lost a lot of weight, started cutting myself more severely and frequently, was having panic attacks constantly, had been hospitalised twice, run away from home twice, and was finally thrown out of school because I was a ‘liability’. I swung back from anorexia to bulimia over the holidays as I started bingeing and abusing laxatives and overexercising to compensate. Getting up at 1am to run on the spot, going on walks that took up half the day, stealing my little sister’s chocolate and swimming for two hours afterwards, stealing a box of chocolates from my mum – getting caught, being told to move out, that I was not her daughter anymore, I was an unwelcome lodger. I didn’t realised how close Christmas was until I noticed the date on the 24th. Opening my Christmas presents filled me with self hatred – my parents didn’t want to give me presents and I didn’t deserve them, it was all for show to keep my brothers and sisters happy. I planned to kill myself but started seeing a psychologist for the first time in December, and decided to give therapy a chance before I gave up.

Christmas age 18. Having worked incredibly hard to sort my life out and get back into my education over the spring and summer, I was raped a month before Christmas. I have one memory from this year. I was wrapped up in my dressing gown, clutching it like it was an essential barrier between me and the world, sitting curled up as tightly as possible on the sofa, trying hard to smile but feeling like I was seeing the world through a fog, like my arms were encased in concrete, like my brain was full of sand and everything was so slow, so unreal.

Christmas age 20. I was home from Cardiff uni, knowing I didn’t want to go back there, that I couldn’t face another term of lying awake all night too scared to close my eyes, of living in halls of residence surrounded by other people my age but not feeling able to talk to them beyond “how about this rain, hmm?”, of waking up from three hours sleep every morning wanting to cry because I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t go to lectures, couldn’t stand living like this. I agonised, went back but finally quit in March.

Christmas age 22. Coming off of citalopram, withdrawal effects making the depression I was barely coping with worse. I wanted to die and I had a plan. Confessing this to my CPN a couple of weeks later in floods of hysterical tears led to the first hospitalisation of 2007.

Christmas age 23. After spending three months of the year in hospital, dropping out of university again, having my digestive system pack up and breaking up with my boyfriend in November, I was at a low weight, terrified to eat half through emetophobia and half through anorexia, and trying to get to grip with my newly diagnosed food allergies.

Christmas last year was just a month before I finally realised I couldn’t carry on at York, so the anorexia was running the show. I don’t really remember details, just that I freaked out about maintaining my weight over the two weeks I was at home, and that things reached a new level of hell as soon as I got back to York.

And those are just the highlights it’s kind of embarrassing, I feel like my life has resembled a particularly bad soap opera at times. Basically, the last 14 Christmases have been unmitigated disasters, all filled with a combination of starving, bingeing, self harming, drinking too much, depression, PTSD, anxiety and suicidal ideation. I know it’s just a song, but every time Greg Lake’s ‘I Believe in Father Christmas’ came on the radio I felt sad, guilty and angry with myself. I was convinced it was my fault that I was having a terrible time. If I would just eat more/eat less/quit drinking/not cut myself/get my ass out of bed and smile for a change everything would be fine, right? I didn’t have a problem, I WAS the bloody problem.

Now I’ve managed to extricate myself from the anorexia I can see things a bit more logically. I would never have told any of my similarly unwell friends that they had brought all their shit on themselves, so why did I apply one set of rules to myself and another to everyone else? Being chronically mentally ill was not something I dreamed about when I was five years old. I hoped that I might be a famous ballet dancer or a vet one day, but I didn’t imagine trying to starve to death, covering myself in scars or being incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital for months. I didn’t ask for any of this and I didn’t deserve it. Because nobody holds a gun to your head and tells you that you must not eat, it can feel as if this is something you are choosing and so any pain you cause yourself or your family and friends is your own fault. But that’s just not true. If the alternative is so terrifying that you can’t imagine choosing to eat even to save your life, that’s not a choice. Your genes, brain chemistry and personal history can hold you captive just as efficiently as another person could.

Barring sudden tragedy, this is going to be the closest approximation to a happy Christmas I’ve had in a very long time, and I’m looking forward to it. I will still roll my eyes at the last line of that song, though. I’ve worked hard to get to this point, but equally other people will have be lonely, stressed and sad over the holidays, for many different reasons and most no fault of their own. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to turn things around, and I won’t take my new found ability to eat Christmas dinner without having a nervous breakdown for granted.

And I wish all of you a hopeful Christmas, and a brave New Year.