The Holidays from the Point of View of a Teen with a Chronic Illness

This time of year is set up to be wonderful, you gather with friends and family, some you haven’t seen in a while, and all sit down and enjoy a meal together, the football game on TV on Thanksgiving day while the younger children play with each other or with their older cousins. On Christmas, kids tear into their packaged excited about what could be inside, eating dinner and any kind of cookie possibly imaginable. For me, now that I have a chronic illness, the holidays just aren’t as much of a joyful celebration as they use to be and sometimes I’d just rather opt out than be the odd one out, call me a Grinch if you wish, but hear me out.

The extra work it takes to plan and host such a big meal can be exhausting, while I don’t have to do a ton of that work, what little I do do like chopping veggies to help my grandma, cleaning up the bathroom, is taxing. Leaving me in need of a few days to recoup, but when in reality I’m not going to get that rest time because if I am prepping for a holiday, said holiday is the next day, and people expect to see me.

The extra commotion, weather it be from the younger members of the family, or just the large number of people all combined in one house, can be over stimulating for me. The shrieking of the children playing, the cheers of the guys watching the football game and the never-ending questions from family I haven’t seen in a while, can quite easily give me a Migraine. And, not just a mild on but a severe last for days after the holiday type of migraine.

Then comes the food, you don’t really notices how every holiday revolves around food until food is something you can’t have. Thanksgiving? The whole point is together around a big dinner table and share a huge meal the puts half the family in a turkey coma, while the other half sit around and talk or watch football. Christmas? Same idea, but this time we add in those beloved Christmas cookies. But for me I know that all of that food is going to make me feel sick, if not actually get sick. I am tube-fed 24/7 for this reason, and a lot of the time it is hard to sit and watch everyone else eat and not eat myself. Or sometimes I feel obligated to eat something because of the hard work everyone put into making the food, and I don’t want to be disrespectful, even though I have a perfectly valid reason for not wanting to eat. So a lot of times I personally go lay down during the mealtime, it just easier to go back into my own little world and not have to sit around everyone and watch them eat the food I use to devour before I got sick.

This one is kind of a spin off of the feeling obligated to eat something because I feel disrespectful if I don’t or because I feel obligated to just because that is what is normal in this situation. There are other things that I feel like everyone expects me to do on a holiday, no matter my health status that day. Like play with the younger cousins, speak to everyone, answer the same question a million times, but the biggest thing I feel like I am forced to do is just being present among my relatives, it looks bad when I just hide out in my room while everyone else is out the in the living room and kitchen being social. Even if the reason I am not present is for health reasons.

The last big thing about holidays that is hard on me because of my chronic illness is the constantly going feeling. By that I mean that someone is wanting to talk to you, the kids are wanting you to play with them, and no matter how hard you try there is no taking a “rest” on either Thanksgiving or Christmas, because it doesn’t matter what you have done in order to gain some alone time to rest up your already battered body, someone will find you and ruin that hour nap you thought you would retake to recharge, or barge into your room where your in bed too sick to finish the day but now you have to deal with the person who hunted you down wanting something.

So please understand that if on Thanksgiving or Christmas I, or someone you know with a chronic illness, needs a break, it’s nothing you have done, and it’s not us wanting to “get out of” doing some of the tasks nobody wants to do in the first place (clean bathroom, wash dishes), instead we would give anything to be out and socializing and spending time with you, their family, but sometimes in the face of a Chronic Illness some things are just out of our control. Sometimes we are forced to take a time out weather we like it or not, and if we have gone ahead and taken said time out we have pushed well past what we should do and we hate every minute of not being involved in the holiday.