Hey y’all. Merry Christmas!
Sorry I’ve been bad about DisneyQuest stuff lately. It’s been a really bizarre couple of months, especially December – it came and went before I had time to blink. I’m working on Song of the South now, and will hopefully have it up tonight or tomorrow!
So anyway…
I’m spending Christmas/New Year’s in California as a traveling nanny for a family I’ve done casual babysitting for back in New York. They’re super nice and the kid (a rambunctious 4-year-old girl) is great, but something feels kind of…off. I think it’s a combination of several things that are making me feel uncomfortable, and maybe it’ll help me to talk through them. My shrink is always telling me to talk to people about my problems, and since I’m 2,500 miles away from my closest friend or family member, this will have to do. Not sure it’s exactly what she had in mind, but whatever.
First off, Christmas has always been a super huge deal for me and my family. For me, the Christmas season begins September 13, the day after my birthday. I love the cooking and baking, the shopping and decorating, praying for snow (then cursing it when there’s enough to be annoying, but not enough to cancel school or work), planning really thoughtful gifts for people, and, most importantly, the warm sense of togetherness and family. Growing up, even when money was tight, Christmas was always huge and magical, and in my adult life I’ve tried to maintain that feeling, even living far away from any family. And although the place I now call home is 600 miles away from the place I call my hometown, and even further from where most of my family live, I’ve still managed to spend Christmas and New Years with family every year.
It’s strange. I travel all the time, don’t mind being on my own, and am generally just fine being far away from my family. I figured that taking this one year off (in exchange for a considerable amount of money) would be okay, and that I was tough and independent enough to not feel lonely. But boy, was I wrong. I was doing mostly okay (even enjoyed myself at Christmas Eve dinner surrounded by very friendly strangers) until I woke up this morning and started scrolling through my Facebook feed. Seeing all my friends and family (especially the ones with whom I normally spend the holiday) posting all their present-opening photos and statuses was the first blow. It suddenly struck me how utterly alone was feeling. Then I saw the time stamps on the posts and remembered that these posts were all several hours old. Most of my family and friends are on the East Coast and in Australia, so waking up on West Coast time, it was like I had missed Christmas all together. As I sobbed silently in the shower this morning, I coined the term “Loneliness Radius”. Mine extends 5,000 miles to the west and 2,500 to the east.
Skipped Christmas traditions aside, I’m also extremely uncomfortable being around new people – particularly in family settings – and all I’ve done since we arrived in the Bay Area two days ago is spend time with other people’s friends and families. The MBTI says I’m an E, but only by a very narrow margin. Being constantly introduced to new people is exhausting and uncomfortable, and never having any private time during which to process all this new information only exacerbates the feeling. I share a hotel room with the 4-year-old (her parents are in a nicer hotel across the street), and am at the beck and call of the parents and family who live in town (none of whom believe in making and sticking to a schedule), 24/7, for the next two weeks. I’ve had perhaps an hour of waking privacy in the past three days. It’s very uncomfortable, especially for someone who’s never been a live-in nanny before.
Also, California itself is making me uncomfortable. I’ve never been here outside an airport before, and it’s like a foreign country. Which would be fine, if I had the freedom to explore and familiarize myself with the place. But I’m on a pretty short leash, and haven’t been able to get used to being here. Having spent 5 years in New York (usually walking several miles a day), and 5 months living in and exploring Europe, walking is typically the way I get my bearings in a new place. Apparently no one walks anywhere here, and even if I weren’t bound by all this “Just sit tight at the hotel all day in case we decide we want to take our kid somewhere, but we’ll only let you know for sure 5 minutes before we come over”, the kid can’t do as much walking as I’d like to do. And if I happen to find myself with a day off, I’d like to spend it doing touristy things down in San Francisco, rather than trying to get comfortable with my immediate surroundings. To this more practical problem, the only solution I can think of is to come back to San Francisco some other time, on an actual vacation, and try to isolate why California makes me uncomfortable, and go from there to familiarize myself with it.
I always used to tell my friends, when they would ask why I put up with this internship, or that babysitting family, that it’s because I’m for sale to the highest bidder. But I think now I’ve found my limit. I suppose we all have to find our personal thresholds of what we will and won’t do for money, and now I know that my Christmas isn’t for sale.
Thoughts?
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