Tis the season to be overwhelmed

The festive season is a time for celebration. It is a time for giving and provides the perfect opportunity to spend time with family and friends. To me, it is the most wonderful time of the year. It is also the most overwhelming.  
I LOVE Christmas. LOVE IT. I love the meaning behind the season, I love spending time with my loved ones and friends, particularly those I don’t get to see as often as I would like. I love giving gifts, mainly because I love to shop for them! I enjoy the feeling of the season, everyone seems a little bit happier than normal, everyone is a little more willing to help others. I also get filled with anxiety once the 1st of December arrives and the advent calendars begin to be opened. All of the things I enjoy the most about Christmas require effort, they require time and they add on to the already demanding list of jobs that need to be done on a regular basis. For someone who often struggles to meet the demands of normal life, the demands of the festive season can be too much.  
December means Christmas parties, lots of them. Obviously, like most adult parties they are held on an evening. NIGHTMARE. Most days I am exhausted by teatime and usually in bed by 8.30pm. That’s without a seizure. The exhaustion comes partly from medication and partly from my brain working hard to stop seizures alongside helping me function like a normal human. There are days when making tea is difficult because I just can’t get my mind to concentrate. Going out to a party at 9pm is like my idea of hell. Don’t get me wrong, I love spending time with friends, I love going out and having a laugh when I am able to, but those times are few and far between. Throughout the year it is easy to make excuses to not go out, and people are generally accepting of the fact that I am tired, at Christmas people are not so accepting of it. Everyone is so full of the Christmas spirit, and often other kinds of spirits, that they can’t understand why you don’t want to spend time with them, they don’t understand how much effort it takes to go out and complain when you go home “early”. People sometimes get offended, they feel like I am a bad friend because I am not making an effort, without understanding that I have used every ounce of my “effort” making tea for my family.  
There is such an expectation to attend parties, social events and do present runs to family and friends and every year I struggle to meet it and every year I cry because I feel like I am failing at life somehow. Throughout the year I have the basics of life planned out in order of priority and I manage to meet those, sometimes with difficulty but I still manage, in December all those priorities go out of the window because of the pressure of the season and I struggle to meet all the demands.  
It is hard to get people to understand the serious impact epilepsy has on me and my daily life throughout the year, it is even more difficult to get people to understand during party season. People struggle to understand that if I don’t come to your Christmas party, or I go home early it is not because I don’t value them, it is because I am exhausted, and don’t want to ruin the event by having a seizure. Pissing yourself in public is not the best party piece afterall.  
This festive season I don’t want expensive gifts (the husband can ignore that statement), I just want people to understand me and my epilepsy a little bit better. Now pass me the mince pies . 

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