Across The Chair

Hearing that Mariah Carey song on repeat this Christmas stirred up very difficult feelings this year. I spent Christmas Eve without a partner, and just one year ago I had shared a very joyful, unforgettable moment singing that very song to the person I loved, all the way home.

One month before December 25th, I dreaded the thought of what I’ve now named the “triple whammy”: Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and my birthday in early January. This was the time of year I once looked forward to — not so much for festivities, but for uninterrupted time with him (just staying home playing Christmas tunes or going away on a cherished holiday) — became a time I feared, because it meant I would mostly be alone.

Growing up, loneliness wasn’t something we acknowledged.

“Don’t say the word ‘lonely’!” my mother used to warn. “People will think you have no friends, and then you really won’t.”

“You see? I can be very satisfied doing things alone. I read my newspapers for hours in the morning, then I end the day with television news. There’s so much going on in the world. There’s no time to be bored!” she would exclaim, my father sitting right beside her.

So I learned young that loneliness should be hidden, reasoned away or “fixed.”
But here’s the thing I am slowly learning as an adult: perhaps loneliness does not need to be frowned upon and solved. Sometimes it just needs to be felt.

Self-love, another dear friend would remind me, is the answer. Love yourself, and the rest will follow.

Here’s a little twist: Yes, loving yourself matters. But before self-love, perhaps we first have to normalize loneliness. Michelle Obama once said that one of the most important life lessons she teaches her children is learning to sit with boredom and isolation, because most of life includes those moments. Many people are, in fact, lonely. And that is okay. It’s painful but nothing to shy away from.

This December, I felt it. And I’ll probably feel it all the way till the first few weeks of January. Not once, neatly, but over and over. I still did things.

This season, I moved through the festive period mostly solo. Here are some of the ordinary, half-okay things I did:

• Shopping online for birthday presents for my January-baby friends
• Wrapping late Christmas gifts
• Walking my Sheltie, Tumble
• Visiting a Taoist meditation centre to learn more about its practices, even though I’m Christian
• Crying in bed two nights before Christmas Day and hugging my stuffed Capybara to sleep (that I bought on my own)
• Waking up the next morning and feeling slightly better
• Reading fiction.. lots of it
• Catching up on the saga of why Jordan Peterson went missing on YouTube
• Starting a blog (which brought me immense joy)
• Mending my stiff back and sour mood the following day after being hunched over my laptop for a full day
• Starting a painting (and not finishing it)
• Trying vibe-coding experiments (failed, but hey! Thanks, Cher Keng)
• Curating my work closet for 2026
• Giving Tumble multiple haircuts
• Watching The Materialists on Netflix, Doritos and massive buckets of tears before bedtime
• Waking up the next morning and feeling better
• Clearing my Google Drive
• Flossing, exercising, and rebooting my circadian rhythm

“That’s a lot,” my friend Rupam would say. And yes, perhaps it looks a little polished, but these habits took years to form. Because I had to figure out what I genuinely liked and did not like doing. Even then, it still gets lonely from time to time, for sometimes short stretches, and sometimes what feels like very long ones.

And I didn’t learn all of this in isolation (pun intended). Therapy helped. Time helped. But mostly, it’s just a series of small, brave, first steps, towards things and people that make life meaningful. Sometimes, that takes years.

Today, on New Year’s Eve, I’m doing small, ordinary things that bring me a sense of grounding. I’m shopping online for birthday presents for my January-baby friends, wrapping late Christmas gifts for my schoolmates, taking my helper’s day off, walking my pet Sheltie, Tumble. The warmth of the afternoon sun lifts my mood. I put away my earphones, choosing to spend half the walk being present. I also text friends on WhatsApp, and scheduled a crocheting date with my best friend’s daughter.

This season has been a revision masterclass in being alone, learning how to move through the festive period in (mostly) solo ways. These are some of the things I did:

This is my first LinkedIn post and yes – it is very long and unconventional one. Feeling lonely around the festive holidays is more common than you think. Loneliness does not mean anything is wrong with you. Sometimes, it simply means you are human.

ChatGPT used for spelling and grammar