Ali Lochhead

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Crisis At Christmas.
I know Christmas has become just like Valentine’s day and it’s all commercial crap now but it’s hard not to get sucked in! Nearly two months to go and I'm already fretting! I’m sitting here figuring out my cash situation and it’s not looking like there’s enough for presents, let alone get up to Scotland to be with my family. This feels grim.

I seem to be getting on pretty well with my ex and am starting to realise whenever I feel vulnerable I miss him. He would have helped me out cash wise. Last year he bought all the presents and it was brilliant. I'm starting to form little secret fantasies, he'll ask my back. He'll invite me to be with him and we'll spend Christmas together! I realise this is dangerous, deluded and ungrounded. There's absolutely no evidence to support my fantasy. We are just sending sweet texts! None-the-less, my mind spins back to the great fun we had last year with his family. I miss his family. The great dinner we made with my children, which he provided. I miss him even more. Can I manage without him? My mind spins forward to the Christmas coming without him and it feels bleak.

I’ve just read ‘The Power Of Now’ about living in the moment and I know it’s just my ego, spinning my mind backwards and forwards in time so it can create an illusionary sense of space, a void, which it then fills with a sense lack. But it doesn’t stop me doing it anyway!

“I’ll go to my children’s father’s home,” I figure. I know I’d be welcome there. But then I counter-argue with myself, he and his wife have little twin girls and I suspect his wife will want to assert herself as a young mother and I tell myself not to butt in. And I don’t really want to be such a high dependency mother I’m putting it all on my kids. They’ll want to be with their little sisters.

But I don’t want to be alone either!

“I can go to friends,” that’s a plan."

“Not a good one,” goes the counter-argument, “I’ll probably end up drinking too much wine and get maudlin! And I’ll doubtless smoke loads!”

And then I remember a press officer I worked with years ago told me he volunteered for Crisis at Christmas helping the homeless in London, and it was the most rewarding Christmas he’d ever had. I research it, there are nine centres around London running for a week over Christmas. I select the women’s centre and opt for two shifts on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I’m in.

“In for what?” I wonder. “What have I let myself in for? Will l be able to manage?” The old egoic mind is whipping up a stir again. “Anyway,” it’s telling me, “aren’t you being a bit of a fraud?” I feel the only difference between me and a homeless person is a benevolent landlady. But I feel grateful for her and grateful to have a plan, my own crisis about Christmas averted for now. And I’m also feeling quite excited about what this new experience of Crisis at Christmas will bring.

Ali.♥

Crisis Homeless Charity