This year, I am not missing Christmas.

I am missing decades of abuse disguised as tradition.

I am missing the lies, the isolation, the sabotage, and the deliberate cruelty that arrived every December like clockwork—and on birthdays too.

This year, I will not be told that “there are no presents from friends or family because nobody really cares about you but me”—
when the truth was a postal strike, withheld mail, stolen bank cards, or gifts intercepted to reinforce dependence and shame.

I will not be sent out alone on Christmas Eve to a local nightclub, isolated and humiliated, because another argument was manufactured and abuse escalated—while he stayed behind, untouched by consequence.

I will not be told I cannot see my daughter, or that she is not allowed in our home for Christmas.

I will not be told he “won’t go to Spain” to see my daughter and family because he hates Spain, her husband, or my ties to a life outside him.

I will not be told we cannot go to my brother’s house for Christmas dinner because he “wants to be alone with me”—
which in reality meant privacy for abuse, not intimacy.

I will not be locked in a freezing garage just before Christmas—
with my passport, car keys, and phone removed—
until I apologise for something I did not do, so I can be “allowed” back inside.

I will not spend Christmas Eve alone while he goes fishing, indifferent to the harm left behind.

And I will not pretend these things “only happened at home” or “only happened in the UK.”
The abuse followed us abroad.
Even on Christmases I paid for—because he refused to work—control, degradation, and punishment continued.

What I will also no longer carry is false guilt.

There were never invitations from his family.
Never invitations from his children.
He never spent Christmas with them after we left the UK—never.
He was not invited by his children or his sister.

People often ask “why?”
The answer is not complicated.

Patterns tell the truth.

This year, I am not grieving the absence of something good.
I am marking the end of something destructive.

I am not “alone at Christmas.”
I am free from abusive Christmases and birthdays designed to break connection, confidence, and joy.

And that is not loss.
That is survival—and the beginning of peace.