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All I Want For Christmas is ME

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Dear Santa, I think I’ve been pretty good this year. I might deserve a present or two. So let me tell you what I would like to see under the tree. N O T H I N G.

All I want for Christmas is me. Me alone, all by myself, with my family nowhere to be seen. Seriously, dear husband and kids; please, forget about buying me knick knacks, earrings and other things I don’t want or need. I know it’s a little hard to wrap up and pile with the other presents, but the only thing I really and truly desire is time to myself.

I want to read a novel. No, I don’t want you to go out and buy me a novel. I want to read one of the several books already collecting dust in a pile on our mantel.

I want to sit in a coffee shop. No, I don’t want to go to a coffee shop with you. I want to go by myself and not recognize another living soul in the place and just sit at a table all by myself and do I don’t even know what, something frivolous, something useless.

I want to watch some TV show or movie that is both not appropriate for my kids, and also unbearably boring for my husband.

I want someone else to scrub the toilets, get the kids to the bus stop, and cook dinner.

I want to be left alone, all alone, for multiple hours in a row.

I want naps.

It’s the same gift I’ve requested for the last three or four years. I will say as the kids get older the intense need to find a way to giftwrap sleep is fading. Yet still, I want a day off. I would settle for say six hours, or barring that just the ability to sleep in for an hour or two without guilt and without being poked at by small fingers. 
Ideally this time to myself needs to happen after the house has been cleaned top to bottom, preferably with outside help. Either that or it needs to happen somewhere far, far, away. Otherwise I know I would find myself spending the time cleaning, or feeling guilty that I should be cleaning, or both.
I suspect this probably makes me a horrible human being, wishing with all my heart for my family to just go away and leave me alone. I feel like a jerk because here is is the holiday season, that time which is supposed to be all about family, and whenever anyone asks me what I want for Christmas what I really want to answer is “For everyone to bug off and leave me be.”
So what do you folks think? Am I the living breathing embodiment of Scrooge? Or do some of you secretly feel the same way I do? 

Comments

  2. You are definitely not alone! Since we don't have any family around, one of us is always with the kids, 24/7 (mostly me). My sanity saver is this: I do grocery shopping alone, after my husband gets home from work, once or twice a week. I'm always in awe of the families that do shopping all together – it must take an enormous amount of time and money (because everyone wants something not on the list). So, sometimes I spend all the time shopping ALONE, but often I can still carve some time to myself, even if it's just reading my book in the car 🙂

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