In mid-November, friends began putting up Christmas trees. "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" played as I shopped at the neighborhood pharmacy. It seems that earlier and earlier each year, I'm bombarded by a season I don't want to be reminded of.My Christmases were filled with loneliness and broken expectations. And the expectations of those around me that I be and feel just like them. Age 7: my mother waits in line for hours to buy Cabbage Patch Kids -- "the" toy of the year -- for my sister and I. Although I'd never asked for one, I knew I was expected to make Mommy happy -- to appreciate this gift as if I'd begged for it all year.
As I grew older, our stockings were filled, not with candy and toys, but with toothpaste, toothbrushes and canned goods taken from the pantry at the very last moment -- gifts I knew were not gifts, but again, had to fake that they were.
Presents appeared under the tree -- cross-stitch kits for both of us because my sister had asked for one; gifts for the "family" like puzzles I hated and games I was far too old for; clothes I later discovered weren't all for me, but a variety for me to choose one outfit from; outfits I hated, but was forced to wear.
Some years I decorated the tree by myself, knowing that no one else would do it.
And at night, while my family slept, I'd plug in the lights and stare at the tree, already disappointed with how the season would end; knowing that nothing would change, and that no gift would make me truly happy.
But then something changed.
At a conference last week, a speaker discussed the varied functions of the right and left hemispheres of our brains. "Our right brain thinks in pictures and is full of possibility," she explained. "Our left brain takes in this collage of pictures and picks out details, which it organizes according to our view of the past and the present."
I cried. All of this time, I've been ignoring my right brain; allowing the left to pick out the details I remember and live my life by. What a waste, I thought.
Later I read a book about mental frames, or points of view. The author spoke of a client whose experience of Christmas mirrored mine -- a woman whose childhood experience of the holidays made her dread them as much as I do now. The counselor challenged her to see or hear something different in her past experience, something she hadn't remembered before. And she remembered an aunt and uncle who'd shared the holiday with her family for several years before moving away when she was a child. Two people who'd laughed and smiled, filling her Christmas with joy and fun.
The author said this woman's mental frame was that of "sameness." Her thoughts of Christmas were constantly filtered through the same negative memories she'd rehearsed over and over. Now that she'd noticed something "different" about her past experience, her present attitude changed.
And so I look for my own "different memories." And surprisingly, they appear: singing carols with my sister on the drive home from Grandma's; the Christmas play I took part in one year, and the 12 weeks of Sunday afternoon practice, with hours spent playing hide and seek in the dark church basement; the hypnotic beauty of snowflakes flying toward the window as I rode in the passenger seat of the car. And memories I know only from stories and photographs: the wooden train set my sister and I re-arranged and played with for hours; the real-looking baby doll with her white nightgown and frilly pink blanket that I loved throughout my childhood; art supplies packed into a red plastic toolbox, even a ping pong table that was really a chalkboard upended on a wooden table.
I remember the visits with aunts and uncles -- the plates full of chocolate desserts that were forbidden during the year. My grandpa's tradition of giving money to each grandchild, each year cleverly hidden inside a less exciting gift -- the kick he got out of watching us discover the secret, the memory my grandma continues on with now that he's gone.
Before my depression, I was brave: At age 5, I sat on the stage at our church holding a microphone, narrating the Christmas story while the other students performed the Christmas play.
That's the girl I'll remember this Christmas. Not the melancholy one, staring alone at the Christmas tree lights, already expecting disappointment -- but the small one who had no fear of being herself, of letting her talents shine on a stage before hundreds of people.
I may still mutter at consumerism and decorate in my own minimalist way, but when that negative, complaining voice returns, I'll picture that little girl, reading from the corner of a humongous stage. And I'll smile -- because I know she's still hiding somewhere inside me.
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