> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.byannali.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # This Holiday Season, I Felt Extremely Lonely for the First Time - URL: https://www.byannali.com/this-holiday-season-i-felt-extremely/ - Published: 2026-01-04T21:21:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-07-27T03:02:43.000Z - Description: And Why I Believe This Is a Good Thing - Author: Anna Li - Tags: Relationships, Personal This holiday season, I felt extremely lonely for the first time in my life. And strangely, this is why I think it’s a good thing. For most of my life, I never felt lonely during holidays, not because I spent them with family or friends. Quite the opposite. I actively tried to create circumstances where I could spend holidays alone. At some point, I developed a tradition of taking a week off around my birthday, Christmas, and New Year’s. During that week, I would leave town. I avoided calls. I avoided birthday messages. **I wanted to be unreachable.** Christmas, especially, was perfect for this. For a long time in Ukraine, Catholic Christmas wasn’t widely celebrated, which meant it stayed quiet and private. No expectations. No noise. No obligations. **It gave me uninterrupted time with myself.** Eventually, I managed to find reasons to spend New Year’s alone, too. After my grandmother and father passed away, I learned that what I actually enjoyed for my birthday wasn’t solitude at any cost, nor was it a planned family ritual. I wanted to spend it with one close person (if I had them in my life). **Just one. Not necessarily a family, but my choice. No special plans. Maybe a meal. An ordinary day. No celebrations. No attention.** Then the war started, and I moved to Canada. Here, everyone celebrates Christmas. But my birthday became almost invisible. Most people didn’t know about it. And I was fine with that. I celebrated it alone, and I genuinely enjoyed it. For the first few years, everything felt stable. I worked through the holidays. I didn’t prepare anything. I trained, exercised, and lived my life. I didn’t feel sadness. I didn’t feel longing. **I felt nothing around holidays, and that felt normal.** But this year, something changed. Before my birthday, I went through a very heavy week. And in that weight, I finally noticed patterns in my life, specifically in my relationship with people and with family. **Growing up, my family felt like a trap.** Not because I didn’t love them. I did. Deeply. But that love came with rigidity, with restriction, with a lack of freedom in my choices. Not legal freedom, not physical distance, but **freedom in how I could exist, choose, and relate.** **That freedom was never available to me.** So I learned something early. **Closeness was dangerous.** Even though I wanted love, care, intimacy, and connection, like everyone else, I never allowed myself to get close to people. And I never allowed people to get close to me. **I chose distant people intentionally. That felt safe.** And the moment someone wanted closeness, I ended the relationship. Quickly. That part was non-negotiable. Even after leaving home at 21, I remained emotionally attached to my grandmother. I loved her more than life. And in my heart, I never really left. **I felt chained to something I couldn’t change, something too heavy to carry.** That attachment shaped everything that followed. Holidays are family time. **So my relationship with holidays reflected my relationship with family. Distance became protection.** For years, it never touched me. It never felt like something I wanted. More than that, it felt like something I would never want. That belief brought a lot of confusion and pain. I genuinely thought there was something fundamental about me that made me incapable of wanting shared moments. I believed I was someone who didn’t need gathering, celebration, or togetherness. Still, I carried one quiet hope. *I imagined meeting someone who would share silent moments with me, watching a sunset, walking in nature, observing trees together. Always one-on-one. Always contained.* I could never imagine friends joining us. I could never imagine his family. That was too much for my nervous system to process. And then this year, everything shifted. For the first time, I felt deeply lonely during the holidays. Not the familiar neutrality. Not avoidance. But real loneliness. A new kind of discomfort. I envied people who gathered. Who celebrated. Who exchanged gifts. Who laughed together. I realized I didn’t actually care what they were doing. I wanted to feel this togetherness. I finally got it. It’s not about dinners or traditions. **It’s about shared presence.** **Common time.** **Common experience.** For most of my life, I didn’t want that. I didn’t care if I ever had it. More than that, I preferred not to have it. And I didn’t. **But this is the first time in my life that I realized I want it.** I’m strangely grateful there are only three holidays a year. One of them is my birthday, and I was lucky enough to spend it with a friend. And now, I feel like I have time. I have a year to figure this out. A year to find my humans. A year to build real connections. A year to create these moments, because now I truly want them. And this is the magic. **This is the magic of how the past can shield us from new experiences. And how awareness allows us to step away from what no longer belongs to us.** We don’t have to carry old patterns forever. We don’t have to drag them through our lives. We can leave them exactly where they belong. And sometimes, **deep sadness, loneliness, longing, and heartache can be the most beautiful things to experience, especially when you never allowed yourself to want what they point to.** And now, I do. This is the magic of life. And I’m looking forward to this journey.