The holidays always put me in a strange mood. As happy as I am to have a break from the stress of schoolwork and the need to wake up before two in the afternoon, I'm also filled with a sense of loneliness. Aunts, uncles, a boatload of cousins, my siblings, and my parents all crammed into a few rooms with me, and still I feel incredibly alone. It's like high school with the way everyone seems to break off into cliques. The aunts huddle together around a table or in the kitchen, the uncles all seem to have confiscated the TV, and everyone else has broken into groups corresponding to those closest in age. Which, for me, ultimately means I'm by myself.

I didn't get to grow up with instant friends. I was the "oops" kid, the one that my parents hadn't intended to have. This means that my older brother is eight years older than I am, and my older sister a full ten years older. The age gaps between me and my what-seems-to-be-an-endless-amount-of cousins is similar if not even greater.

So at family gatherings around the holidays, when everyone seems to be splitting off into groups of who they grew up with and befriended beyond their family ties, I just seem to drift between groups or else be subjected to only my younger brother's presence (which I get to do regardless thank you very much, and I'd rather not spend the entire however-many-hours-I-will-be-suffering with my fourteen-year-old brother). However by the end of the night, I usually end up off on my own unless I've latched on to the people I actually did grow up around (aka my older brother and sister, who probably also do not want to be passing the time with their almost twenty-year-old little sister no matter how much of an adult she is or can be). And if I'm not alone or latched onto one sibling or the other, I've been given resident babysitter duties.

Because not only am I alone in my general age group, I'm one of the few who is without a significant other or children at family gatherings and clearly being the closest in age makes me perfect for watching the small children even though literally everyone else has even more experience than I do in watching small children.

I love my family, immediate and extended, and I know they don't intend to make me feel excluded 99.99% of the family gathering, but it really can't be helped when the only people relatively close to my own age is my fourteen-year-old brother or my almost twenty-eight-year-old brother.

On top of that feeling of lonely isolation, there's a sense of not even knowing who any of these people are as people. Like, what do I even know about them beyond the fact that we're related and their name? It probably doesn't help that majority still treat me like I'm twelve or younger...

This particular line of thought really struck me this year. For Christmas with my mom's side of the family, the adults draw names at Thanksgiving in order to cut down on the amount of shopping (which I desperately needed as I was already shopping for eighteen people and did not need to add a thousand people I hardly ever see to that list). By adults, I mean everyone who is out of high school (since I had turned eighteen and technically became an adult while I was a high school junior).

Most of them probably don't have an issue with getting each other presents. They grew up together as friends as well as family. They don't really need to ask what each other would like for Christmas. They already know things that whoever's name they drew likes.

I don't have that luxury. This was the first year I got to participate in the drawing, and me being me was super paranoid about what to get my cousin and what he would like and omigod what if I got him something he absolutely hates and what if it's terrible I'll never live it down omigod omigod omigod --

Yeah...I may or may not have had a bit of a freak out over gifting, which isn't that uncommon for me. I love giving gifts, even more so when I get someone something they absolutely love. It's what makes it so much fun when I get my friends gifts and that smile breaks out on their face. It makes me not regret how much my bank account wants to throttle me around the holidays. But I don't have this same kind of information about or inside jokes with my cousins. I can't just go to the mall with only a list of things I know they like in my head like I can with my friends or my siblings.

I had to ask what they would want. I hate asking that question because I just feel like I'm supposed to just know. We're family. How could I not just know?

I think that thought hurts worse than the isolation. There are just days where I'm struck by how much I don't know my own family.