I Hate Christmas Gifts Because of My Mother

I hate getting gifts. Yep. You read that right. I hate getting gifts. That's not to say I'm not appreciative. It also doesn't mean I don't know how to show that appreciation. In fact, sometimes I go a little overboard and show it a little too much. It also doesn't mean I don't like being recognized, because that's something I desperately need. But not in the form of gifts.

I'm a giver. I'm that person who starts Christmas shopping in January. It's not so that there are a ton of gifts under the tree. I do it by paying attention to the people I love. I put a lot of thought into the gifts I give. I take notes all year long...literally. If someone mentions something they've had their eye on or some sort of wishlist item that they just won't buy for themselves, I add it to my list. If I come across a good deal, I buy it. And I'm big on personalization. Like really big. No matter what I give, if you get a gift from me, it comes straight from my heart. What I want in return is a thank you...a genuine, bona fide thank you. Don't half ass that shit with me. I don't mean be all over the top and disingenuous. I just mean make sure I know you appreciate it. Look me in the eye and thank me. That's really all I ask.

Leading up to Christmas this year, gifts began piling up under the tree. I had wrapped the gifts from the kids and I to the hubby and put them there. I think there were five or six gifts in total. Over the last few years, I'll admit my feelings have been hurt a little because I do go all out for everyone and don't usually have much to open. Nobody puts anything in my stocking even though I make sure they all have things in theirs (yes, including my husband). But it's not about the gifts. It's really about the reciprocation. Put a couple of 50 cent bath bombs and a loofah in my stocking just to show me that you appreciate what I do. But this year, a few days before Christmas hubby went shopping. Suddenly there was no room to put gifts under the tree for the kids because there were so many for me. Granted, one happened to be so big he put it in a plastic tote, but still...it felt really overwhelming to me and I couldn't figure out why.

As the days went by and Christmas got closer, I began to feel sick to my stomach every time I looked under the tree. I started feeling this overwhelming sense of anxiety. It just felt gross seeing so many things for me there. I tried explaining it to my husband and he said he realized that he's dropped the ball the last few years and that he wants me to feel appreciated so I should get used to being spoiled. He just wasn't understanding how poorly it made me feel.

I gave him the example of how I won $500 last year right before Christmas and I didn't want it. It was like I couldn't get rid of it fast enough. I reached out and found a family to adopt that had nothing and needed it. My family convinced me that I never spend money on myself so I should get something with it, so I bought an Oculus Quest. I said it was a family gift to justify it. Nobody else ended up using it. Buying that felt yucky to me, so I made sure we spent more of our own money on the family we adopted and also reached out to people I knew for help for them. That's the person I am. I don't help people because I want credit for it. I don't do it for approval. I do it because it's who I am. Even when I had next to nothing, I gave what I didn't need as badly to someone who had less. I don't know how to be any different.

I thought at first that maybe that was why the presents under the tree bothered me so much, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized exactly why I'm more of a giver than a receiver. I was conditioned to be this way. I'm starting to realize that my entire life was just training on how to be subservient. I get why I was deemed "sassy" as a little girl. My face couldn't hide how I felt, even if I was trained to keep my mouth shut. I understand now why I got so many beatings when I got older. I was mouthy. I didn't give a shit about keeping my mouth shut anymore. Because fuck it. Because damn it, I was going to stand up for myself no matter what the cost. I was going to stand up for anyone who needed it, beatings or not. Damn the man and all that shit!

At first I thought maybe the root of my feelings were because when I was being molested, gifts were basically hush money. Maybe seeing all those gifts felt icky to me somehow. But as I looked at my husband and the kids, I knew that wasn't the case. I couldn't possibly feel that way about gifts from people who I know love me so much. And then it hit me...the G word. The one word that has pretty much ruled my life no matter what I do...

G-U-I-L-T

Fucking guilt. It's the one thing I can't seem to get a hold of in my head. It's something I try to put in one of those boxes in the back of my head. I've tossed it into the one labeled "Shit I'll Deal With Later" so many times it's not even funny. But that motherfucker keeps creeping back out, ending up front and center, right between my eyes, poking me as hard as it can. It's a constant reminder that I'll never be good enough. It's always telling me to keep trying harder. It's that nagging doubt, forever making me feel unworthy and small. And who put that doubt in my head? It wasn't my step father who did nasty things to my hooha or beat me till I was full of bruises. It wasn't anyone in his family that he shared me with, or any of his friends. It wasn't the guy who sexually assaulted me in high school because I went to a party with him and he thought I owed him some pussy or the men I was in relationships with later in life who abused me in ways you can't even imagine. Nope, it was my mother.

It was the one person who was supposed to be there to protect me. It was the woman who was supposed to love me and nurture me, to wrap me in her loving arms and tell me everything was going to be ok. Instead, she threw me to the wolves. She didn't protect me from my molester. She found out he was molesting me after she left him. Ya know what she did? She went back to him! She asked me how I felt about it because he "promised it would never happen again." What kind of mother does that? I fucked up as a mom. I know I did. I can't even begin to apologize to my kids enough for not doing right by them. But I didn't just throw them to the wolves.

As I looked at the gifts under the tree, I began to realize that every gift I've ever received from her has come with a caveat. There has always been guilt attached in some way or another. It always cost a lot or if she got me something "just because," she would throw it in my face later, as if I've never done anything like that for her. I was told growing up that we didn't have money for gifts. Birthdays & Christmases were never about gifts. They were about family. I never felt badly about that. But looking back, I now remember being made to feel guilty when my father would send me nice things. My mother said she never bad-mouthed him, but she did. She talked about his money like it was a bad thing. She was jealous and she wanted me to hate him for it. She didn't want me to like the things he sent me...so I didn't. I wanted to please her so badly. Poor, poor mommy. She was always the victim. I had to make her feel better. It was always about her, never about me. Never. Even in high school when I got straight As. Even when I went to state competition for Business Professionals of America and qualified for nationals just to be told I couldn't go (which I'll write about later). Even when I ran barrel races & showed my horse or ran cross country. She "doesn't remember" any of that. It's like to her my life never happened...because she wasn't there for any of it. Her version of my life is so different from what really happened, because she was too focused on herself to know I was alive. It's why my brother is dead. It's why gifts make me guilty. It's why I've been in abusive relationship after abusive relationship. None of it is because I was molested and beaten. It's because my mother didn't protect me.

I don't even remember her hugging me growing up. I remember hugs from everyone else, but not her. How sad is that?

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Lynae

Writer • Healing Advocate

Rewriting the stories I once survived