Anonymous
Photo by Aubrey Odom on Unsplash
If you’re reading this, family comes in many shapes and sizes.
My strongest childhood memory is swinging on a swing set just before our family Thanksgiving. Watching my feet dangle in the air as I crept higher and higher into the sky. Pushing my legs off the ground, feeling the burn in my calves, and watching the sun filter in and out of the tree branches over my head as colorful leaves fell into huge piles at my feet.
Family has always been complicated for me. A combination of feeling this pressure to succeed, but never fail, mixed with the expectation to be a third parent for my younger siblings. I would do anything for my family members, but at the same time, I sometimes dread coming home and the anxiety it brings with it. Although I’ve come out to my family, they are not openly accepting of my sexuality, and often it feels like a poorly kept, often ignored secret that hangs over every awkward conversation or moment in my head, loudly haunting me. All of this tends to make holidays a difficult time for me, as my anxiety takes over my mind and runs me through a hundred and one ways that things could go wrong. To my brain, this anxiety feels like swinging gradually higher and higher on a swing, feeling that at any moment I could fling right off. This all feels so in contrast with the picture painted of this holiday for many other people, a time to be with family, a space to feel support and love, and a time to be grateful.
Something that has helped me the past couple of years, is our Friendsgiving. I’m not the most extroverted person, and I usually take a solid couple of hangouts to warm up to the new people in my life. So, if you are one of those people I feel comfortable around, I promise that I deeply value your friendship. Every year for the past seven years I’ve been part of a Friendsgiving. The people, the location, and the food changes every single celebration, but the underlying current is the same. It’s a space where I can be myself, where I don’t have to censor myself or make myself smaller. A place where the people around me support me unconditionally and have no expectations of me (other than not burning the stuffing). I am beyond grateful for this chosen family, which has shifted throughout the years as I’ve lost contact with people or made new connections in different cities. They carry the spirit of the holiday for me.
I still travel home for the holidays, and my family still makes me anxious, but I know that I have an incredible second family who is always there for me. So I want you to know that it’s okay if your family gives you anxiety, it’s okay if you don’t always associate holidays with happy emotions. It’s okay to find a group that feels like family outside of your relatives. You deserve to feel happy and supported, in a space without expectations.
Anonymous, Boston University
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