Holiday Blues 2

 Hey peeps,

So. we’ve successfully spent our second Christmas here in the UK and to be honest, there’s a lot to highlight about how there's nothing much to write home about…does that even make any sense?

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that contrary to popular belief, Christmas can also be a very lonely period depending on your circumstance or point of view. Speaking as immigrants still trying to find their feet, it can be a really trying period. Apart from all the stress of trying to get your papers sorted (with the huge fees required to do so), there's also the loneliness that hits you every time. Now we are a bit more fortunate than most seeing as we have family members here who you can relate with from time to time.. However, these interactions are very limited; for most of the holiday, you are left to your own devices. London is a lonely place and its so easy to fall into some sort of holiday depression just off the fact that you’re on your own so much of the time and no one seems to care too much about it…. Despite the myriad of things to do, there are so many factors that make this impossible: the weather, money, dampened wills, strangers everywhere and just a general sense of torpor.

To counteract this, Chioma and I made plans not to get too caught up in the holiday blues…we planned a trip to Birmingham to see our family friends and that was a huge success (apart from the fact that I seemed to have caught serious flu from this trip) and we had our annual Christmas get together at Aunty Ngozi’s place which also went down very successfully. Nevertheless, after all this, we’ve been alone at home for a few days now and I believe I’m going stir crazy. The unfortunate part of this is that unlike in Nigeria where you can just decide to jump out of the house and go somewhere, it's not the same here…the weather has been brutally cold and financial restrictions really limit you from doing anything you’d want to. Even though ive accepted it as part of the sacrifices in this phase of my life, it’s still very “somehow”.

It gets laughable after a while because you know many people who’d trade circumstances with you in a heartbeat. Sigh..

 Maybe it’s just the ability to come on here and rant away, or just the fact that I really hate being bored but at some point, I know it's definitely going to get better… and this is what really keeps me going.

After all, it's supposed to be the season to be jolly no?