On the outside, looking in...

Quite a few friends seem to be thoroughly depressed and miserable at the moment, struggling to reconcile their 'real' selves with the self that will be welcomed and included in the end of year family/ friend/ work festivities.

The ordeal of christmas with family, or christmas meals at work, social occasions where there is an enforced sense of jollity, and limits put on when/where/how you interact with people...so many of us find this horribly trying.

Picture the scene. You're arriving at the Parents, presents in hand (that you didn't want to buy), children running amock at your heels (that you can't stand), a grin plastered to your face (or is a rictus of rage...?)

You sit down to a badly cooked meal, shoulder to shoulder with relatives you only see once a year, have absolutely nothing in common with except for shared genetics (a miniscule fraction in addition to what you share with every other human on the planet), and you know, you just *know*, that if these people knew the 'real you', you would be confronted with expressions of horror, distaste, incomprehension, disgust, fear...

If you have a partner who knows, loves and shares that inner side of you, then at least you can share amusement, 'in-jokes', and sly glances that hint at 'if only they knew...'

But when you have to face these things alone, it's even harder. Put in this situation, I can guarantee that within half an hour and one glass of gin, I'll be talking about clit piercings and anal sex, and getting my knockers out in order to demonstate lapdancing on some random uncle.

Which is why I don't do it. Fortunately, I'm in the position of being able to take or leave family and work christmas stuff. Parents and colleagues have long since given up trying to force me to do anything I don't want to do. And even if I'm made to, I can take my lovely husband with me, so I've got some moral support. Even if discussion of anything to do with sex or pervery totally squicks him, I'm still very lucky.

But even so, I myself am struggling with a little bit of the 'kinky single at christmas' syndrome. I know I won't be getting any text messages telling me to sneak off to the toilet, take my knickers off, and taste my own cum, halfway through christmas dinner. There will be no bruises between my legs to savour, as I cook breakfast on christmas morning for my husband.

But kinky or otherwise, we *all* feel like this sometimes. Some more than others. I remember sitting through some wanky training course at work on 'bullying in the workplace', where they asked us to think of and discuss, an example where we once felt excluded from the group. It made me smile...I've *always* felt like this. As a bookish, bespectacled, highly 'academic' child...then later, as a dirty goffick, then as an alternative person who rejected the alternative social life for homely pursuits like knitting, baking and snuggling up on the sofa with a book and the cats...and now, most recently, as a kinkster. It's very rare for me to feel *included*. I am, always and forever, on the outside looking in.

But what I've realised is, that to a greater or lesser degree, we *all* are. We're born alone, and go into death alone. Times like christmas are socially acceptable ways of easing a little of that loneliness, or giving us the illusion of easing it. So maybe the trick is to enjoy it, throw yourself into the family festivities with a glad heart, knowing that your kinky friends, goth mates, knitting club...whatever...they'll still be there waiting for you, when you come home. And maybe, just maybe, someone will send you a text anyway, even if they aren't your lover, your play partner, your dom or your sub. Maybe it will even be me.

We all hide from the emotion of loneliness, we use different ways to ease that pain. The most obvious one is sex, which is perhaps why being single at christmas cuts deep to the heart for some. Sex is a route to the all-too fragile and transient moment where the isolation within all of us is dispelled.

But maybe if you can't have sex, you can still challenge that isolation, be it with a touch, a cuddle, a text message, or even the shared understanding implicit within a look.

I must be feeling a little soppy today. My cat left big muddy paw prints all over the bed linen this morning and I didn't even spank his paws.