Christmas Shopping

Early in the fall Jordon creates a spreadsheet.  It has a list of people we want to give gifts to, ideas, and a rough budget.  As we get closer to Christmas, everything gets refined, updated, and hopefully all completed.  This year he did a great job of organizing, researching, shopping, and tying up some lose ends for me so I had as little Christmas stress as possible.  It actually went pretty good until two weeks ago.

A fortnight ago I was supposed to have picked up the last of Jordon’s gifts but I never got around to it for a bunch of reasons and the money got frittered away and I kept thinking that we would get paid again before the holidays and everything would be okay.  I wanted to get Jordon an iPod Nano or an iPod Touch, mostly because we have had a rough 2007.  Well I had a rough 2007 and that made his year less than spectacular.  The plan was to have all of our Christmas shopping done by December 17th and we would be done.  A couple of things came up and I frittered away a lot of the money that I wanted to spend on Jordon’s present.  I was so frustrated with this that I took it out on Jordon.  To say I was being a bitch around here to him was be an understatement.  On top of that while I was being a bitch, I wanted to make a point to Jordon and I told him what Lee was getting him for Christmas.  That went over about as well as one would expect.  I had to apologize to Lee and then woke up this morning with the realization that at this point, Jordon doesn’t even want a Christmas gift from me.  Every year I wait until the last minute and almost every year I am embarrassed by what I gave to him.  One year I actually gave him a book on organic lawn care with the $2.99 price tag still on it.  This year was supposed to be different but in almost every way it was the worst for it.

Last night was rock bottom.  We went to Costco to look around as neither Mark or I had gotten him a single thing (that’s my fault, not Mark’s) and there was nothing.  We checked out Wal-Mart and nothing and I was mad at myself and mad at the situation and upset and I was lashing out at Jordon and frustrated that he wasn’t going to let me spend every cent we had so I could buy myself out of this mess I created and we could have our perfect and amazing Christmas.

To Jordon’s credit, he talked with me and we got to the root of why I was acting so miserable.  In the end I keep thinking that I need to make up for all of the mistakes that I keep making.  I keep thinking that if I can get the perfect gift, then Jordon will forget what an awful wife I can be sometimes and I become obsessed on trying to make things “right” and ignore the fact that I am making things a lot worse.  I also had to come to grip with the fact that I was acting in some ways for some horrible reasons.  I went to bed last night and was sick about how horrible Christmas morning was going to be.

This morning I talked with Jordon.  He wasn’t mad at me for acting like a crazy idiot but is often saddened that I let myself get to this point.  For weeks he has been enjoying the shopping but doesn’t care that much about the receiving.  He is excited about Boxing Day and some things we could do as family (he brought Mark home a GT Sno Racer the other day) and here I am forgetting all of that.  It’s crazy, we have been a part of Christmases where tens of thousands of dollars have been spent and thought it was ridiculous and at the same time have enjoyed times without any money.  A couple of years ago we were listening to a philosopher explain why rich people gave bad gifts.  Basically he said that overtime we replace well thought out inexpensive gifts with poorly thought out expensive gifts as we become older and have more disposable income.  That was what I was trying to do.  As Jordon said, “I wish you could see yourself in the way that Mark and I see you and that being together is good enough for me.”  Sadly he meant it.  Instead of me trying to spend hundreds of dollars, he suggested $50 as a budget and I felt a tremendous amount of relief with the reassurance that I am loved regardless of how much I drive everyone crazy and I have someone to take the pressure off of me when I need it.

One of the things that I have struggled with since I had been dealing with depression is how I see myself.  I see myself as not worth the effort others invest into me and also not worth the trouble I cause Jordon.  I concentrate on that and I tend to look away from the positives.  As Jordon keeps saying, “Just except you are the person that our dog thinks you are.” (that only makes sense if you are a dog owner)

One of things that we did discuss was that I need to talk more with friends before I get to this point.  When I am dealing with Jordon’s birthday, Christmas and our anniversary I always manage to mess it up, partly because I don’t have him to bail me out.  Unless I want to give him horrible gifts and go through a great amount of agony every holiday, I need a better way to dealing with this.

Technorati tags: Christmas, Jordon Cooper, iPod Nano, iPod Touch, GT Sno Racer