The Wednesday before Christmas, I had to do Christmas substitute with my mother and her partner. By the end of it I was already sick of my sister - who I was going to be stuck with for most of my Christmas trip away. It boded poorly.
On the Friday before Christmas I finally made the phone call to ACC for the password to open the information they had emailed me weeks before. It led to a grumpy day.
While I had found the psych registrar's report to have a bit of a game of telephone feeling, the reports by the psychologist took that to another level. I had had the feeling a few times, especially near the end, when coming out of session that we had been having two different conversations. But I was not expecting how much his not proved that.
We had been communicating so much worse than I had realised. I didn't realise I was that bad at talk to people.
I am not sure I ever got my point about anything across to him.
Either that or he was wilfully misinterpreting, but in fairness the problem was probably me.
But the whole thing really felt like he was describing someone else rather than just me from a distance.
Also, he described me as wearing slides. Jandals and slides are not the same thing. I would never.
Then, grumpy from that I went for dinner out with Simon, Joe and Firmin before we watched the new Chicken Run movie to celebrate Christmas. It is inferior to the first Chicken Run.
The next day I stuffed around a bunch before finally packing, and in the evening returning to Simon's. Joe having to put up with me for a second evening in a row. They also had other guests staying, an ex of Simon's who was also someone I had been friend's with in health sci and his husband - so that was nice as a catch up.
First thing Christmas eve morning I sorted myself and Simon drove me to the airport for my flight to Christchurch. I like that Christchurch airport is close enough to other things that I could walk to shops that weren't airport shops to get breakfast between my flights. Then back to the airport to meet my sister and be reminded that I should have been more careful to travel alone before I had even got on the second flight.
A second prop plane...
A smaller prop plane...
A fucking Q300. Tiny seats. Claustrophobic aisle.
And the woman in the woman seat beside me went to sleep immediately and sleep spasm elbowed me, repeatedly, all through the flight.
While we flew over cloud the whole way so there was nothing to see through the small amount of window I was able to see through.
Arriving in Nelson, I got picked up by my cousin Breffni for a few hours of hanging out with relatives on mum's side of the family before my dad came and drove us to the middle of nowhere.
The family hosting Christmas were more than 20km past Tapawera up the Tadmor. So far from everything and with what I think was the Hope mountain range blocking all cell signal. And so there were a lot of my dad's family isolated away for much of the week. For Christmas itself it was twenty adults and another ten kids. Too many people. But from Boxing Day onward the numbers slowly shrunk.
It was days of too much family.
Too much meat.
Too much watching children feed whole eggs to eels.
Not enough sleep.
But a very nice break from the internet, and thus news. As both world news and the more local are very depressing. New Zealand's new government is just white supremacy and right wing economic stupidity. And the global situation is so dominated by western nations looking the other way while Israel does abhorrent things to the Palestinians. So almost a week of no news was a good thing.
Also such things as learning I definitely am far too easy to gaslight, with one of my cousins having me doubting all of my fairly sparse childhood memories with her absolute certainty that basically every one that included her (and she lived with my family for a significant chunk of my childhood so featured heavily) wasn't how it had happened and I was making it all up. It was only when other cousins brought up the exact same stories later and their versions matched entirely with what I remembered that I realised I should trust myself over one single person declaring my memories entirely false. Family making me crazy.
On the morning of the 29th, the Friday after Christmas, my cousin Jocelyn drove me the hour-ish to St Arnaud for my ride back to Dunedin. Then it was a very long drive with Lisa from my roleplaying games, and whose wedding I was groomsman at this year been. Apart from the very long time sitting in a car, it was actually pretty nice.
And then I was home.
And my body fell out from under my for most of the time since. Pushing through my chronic illness to try and act sort of like a person for the time I was up north was something my body had to punish me for.
Also, the lots of sunburn and bug bites.
I did manage to leave my house for dinner with visiting relatives from mum's side on New Year's Eve, though was home in time to do the night when people were partying out in bed reading. Because books are better than people.
Thursday this week I had lunch with someone I have had a purely internet/txt friendship with since at least 2013. He had even attempted to ask me out a bit before I met Shitlord but for reasons that had made sense at the time I thought it wasn't a great plan. Because Shitlord proved a great plan. (Turned out to be doing him a favour as he met someone much better instead who he is still happily with.) Was nice to finally meet in person after so many year of some pretty serious conversation, and did leave me wondering how I had been too lazy/socially terrible to have ever met him in the almost seven years when we were chatting and both living in Dunedin and now only meeting when he has left and passing though town on holiday.
I am bad at people.
And almost recovered from Christmas, I think. Basic moving about my flat is starting to hurt less anyway. Almost back to just usual levels of ache.
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