The Christmas I Spent Alone

I had to do some light googling on this to find out when it happened, because I couldn’t really remember when it fell. You know sometimes you have friends for certain periods of your life, and then you change jobs or something, and the people you saw every day are never seen again? It was that kind of thing, except I couldn’t remember how old I was when I was friends with these people, nor could I remember what job I was doing, so I didn’t have context.

However, I did get a very specific gift that year, and so I googled that, and boom, there’s the answer.

I was 17 when this happened. You see, I want to be specific, because I knew I wasn’t a full adult, but I didn’t want to make it sound worse than it was, by getting my age too young.

I was living with Mother at the time. I believe at this point I’d spent some weeks couch surfing, and two nights at the Sally Army refuge on a friend’s floor – but that felt really awkward. She had real problems. Her parents had thrown her out and disowned her. Mine had just thrown me out, and that was because I was an awful person. She was a victim, and I was a bad daughter.

Urgh, isn’t it horrible how you accept that all of this is your fault?

Anyway, this Christmas was going to be quite social. Her boyfriend, Eddie, was spending the day with us, and my friends, a gay couple I’ll call Adam and Charlie (yeah, I did just name them after the #1 ship in the Mighty Ducks fandom, sue me), were swinging by as they bounced between both sets of parents.

I checked with mum that morning, was it ok if they came over? They’d be over around 11am, stay for about an hour, and then move on in time to be at Charlie’s mum’s for Christmas dinner.

Yes, she said. That was fine.

And that’s how it unfolded. I had a lovely visit with Charlie and Adam, gossip was had, cigarettes were smoked, presents were discussed.

Unlike most children of NParents, Christmas gifts at this time were exactly what I wanted. She asked for a list, I provided one, and she bought from it. It was only after I actually moved out properly (with a legal tenancy contract), that things changed.

Adam and Charlie realised they’d overshot their leave time by about 15 minutes, and I showed them out. Big hugs and kisses, and when I was done waving them off, I realised that the house was silent. Empty. Cold.

It should be noisy. Eddie and Mum should be in the kitchen, her making dinner, and him working his way through white wine with concentrated devotion. It should be warm. The oven heated the whole downstairs.

Lights were off. Radio was off. Oven was cold. Nobody in the house.

At first, I assumed that they’d gone to Eddie’s to get some missing ingredient, and they’d turned everything off because… well, Silent Generation. They live to save every single penny they possibly can.

Then 1pm rolled around and there was no sign of them. Ok, fine.

2pm.

Still weird, and I was getting hungry.

I grabbed a bag of crisps or something, and when I came to throw away the empty packet, I saw that the entire partly-cooked dinner was in the bin.

Even then, I didn’t really get it.

My brain suggested that perhaps she and Eddie had had a fight and he’d… binned it in anger? I know you can only read text, not tone, here, but read that in a very sceptical and questioning tone. Eddie was a bitter man – not an angry one – whose loathing was turned mostly on himself, and any external loathing would come out in the odd sarcastic comment that could be a bit too on the nose.

I also have to clarify, Eddie was never cruel to me. In fact, I never saw him be cruel to mum. I saw him get sad and pass out after drinking, and it was blatantly obvious to anyone with eyeballs that he was not a happy man. But I never saw him mean. His cruelty is only hearsay from Mother. And since the rest of this tale will show how easily she gets offended, I think it’s safe to say that this character trait is largely unverified.

The love of his life, Opal, the one that got away, could never commit to him. But since I only met her once (and she seemed lovely too), I can’t say that’s proof of Eddie’s behaviour either. But at the same time, Opal seemed a lot more in charge of her emotions than Mother, so perhaps it could be.

Anyway, it was unlikely that Eddie binned it. And I hadn’t heard raised voices, although the three of us had been gabbing away while the latest Now That’s What I Call Music played on my stereo, so I could’ve missed it.

But that was the excuse I latched on to. That somehow the dinner had been binned, and they were now scouting for a replacement.

In case you’re wondering why I haven’t checked for a note to explain their absence, the answer is: nobody would ever leave a note in that house.

Around 3pm I made myself beans on toast, and then hid the empty bean can under the discarded Christmas dinner, in case mum came home furious that I hadn’t read her mind and instinctively known that she’d be home by Xpm and dinner would be served at Ypm, and I had foolishly ruined my appetite just to spite her.

Around 11pm, I made peace with the fact she wasn’t coming home and ate some more toast.

She didn’t come home the next day either.

I was used to staying home alone. She’d been leaving me alone since I was 14. And to be honest, I lobbied for it. I didn’t want to visit her family, who just seemed to put me down non-stop. If I said I enjoyed English at school, they would tell me about cousin Jemma, who was very smart and had real prospects. One of her stories had been published in the school paper. And of course, she’s only six, so that makes it more impressive. Oh fuck off. I was expressing an opinion about school, not getting into a pissing contest with a child barely out of nappies. And believe me, everyone’s told me I’m stupid a hundred thousand times. I know this child who can’t even spell “banana” is better than I can ever hope to be.

Oh. Sorry. Family bitterness. Anyway, Mother was delighted to drop me, and I was delighted to have some real freedom from the drama. Not that I recognised it as such back then. I just thought I was super grown up and responsible, because I would walk 3 miles into town to buy things, eat when it made sense to me, set my own bedtime. And – OMG – sleep in. I have been an insomniac since I was nine. Or at least, that’s when I noticed it. I find it really hard to get to sleep, so even on school nights, I’d be awake until 2am, then up at 7am, so when the weekend rolled around – the ones where I wasn’t up at 6am to get to the stables – all that sleep debt would come down hard. I could easily sleep until midday. Mother hated that. She would be slamming doors and vacuuming my room at 9am very pointedly, while muttering about was a “stupid lazy lump” I was and how “some people” had all the luck and “could laze around in bed until the end of the day”.

So, basically, I could live with her not being around. Although I had been looking forward to Christmas dinner. Then again, I probably side-stepped food poisoning. She’s a terrible cook.

She returned on 27 December, as if it was perfectly normal to bin the Christmas dinner and take off for a day and a half without explaining it to your offspring.

She never explained why. In fact, she told me to my face that it never happened.

Then she said that it was because Eddie hated me.

Then she added that it never happened, and I was a “filthy liar”.

My take?

You know how I said Charlie and Adam overshot their estimated leave time by about 15 minutes?

I think that she took my rough guidelines for times as absolutes, found me to be a liar when Charlie and Adam did not leave at exactly midday, got into a raging huff and stomped off with Eddie in tow.

Since Eddie grew up in abuse, expecting him to point out that she was behaving unhinged is an unreasonable ask. He wasn’t my parent, he had no responsibility for me, and was dealing with his own shit. I do not blame Eddie for how Mother behaved.

Especially because sometimes he would explain what unfolded at a later date, occasionally defend me, talk Mother down, or stop her from binning my stuff. Not always, but enough for me to consider him… not quite an ally, but not fully on Mother’s side either.

He also gave me the odd cigarette or slipped me a five pound note when I was broke. In a universe where I expected nothing from an adult that was Mother’s friend and always received exactly that, he was kind.

The only thing he said about this was that she wanted to bin my Christmas presents, but he talked her out of it. I still don’t know for sure what all this was about.