Not every post here is a happy one—because not all of us are happy. That’s a reality we don’t talk about enough, especially in queer spaces that often feel pressured to perform joy. Sometimes it’s necessary to say out loud that things aren’t okay, and that being unhappy doesn’t mean you’re failing. It just means you’re human.
I’m depressed this holiday season, and I’m tired of pretending that a festive playlist, a stiff drink, or a forced smile is going to fix it.
What makes it worse isn’t just that I’m single—it’s being single around family, during a time of year that seems designed to spotlight exactly what I don’t have. The holidays have a way of turning every dinner table into a quiet scoreboard: who partnered up, who reproduced, who followed the expected script.
And once again, I didn’t.
I show up. I bring wine. I ask questions. I listen to stories about kids’ schedules, school plays, family photos, future plans. I nod, I smile, I congratulate. And somewhere between the mashed potatoes and dessert, I fade into the background—the gay sibling with no plus-one, no milestones to announce, no Hallmark-friendly narrative to contribute.
No one is cruel about it. That’s almost worse.
When Family Love Still Feels Like Distance
It’s subtle. It’s the way conversations naturally drift away from me. The way my life feels like an intermission instead of a storyline. The way being single isn’t treated as neutral, but as something temporary, or sad, or vaguely inconvenient for others to know how to talk about.
Being around family is also hard in another way—one people don’t always like to talk about politely. The politics. The comments. The assumptions. The things said casually that land heavily when they’re about your rights, your body, your community, or your safety.
And because I’m in their home, I swallow it.
I keep my temper in check. I monitor my tone. I edit myself in real time. I let things slide that I would never tolerate elsewhere. I calculate whether speaking up is worth the tension, the eye rolls, the “can we not do this now?” looks that follow. The holidays demand peace, even if that peace comes at the cost of silence.
The Exhaustion of Staying Quiet
It’s exhausting to be both the outsider and the guest. To know exactly where you stand—and where you don’t.
I don’t want to be there this year. Not because I don’t love my family—but because being around them reminds me how unseen, how contained, how carefully managed I feel.
Dating Burnout and the Loneliness Gap
Dating hasn’t helped. I haven’t had a date in years. Years. Not a bad date, not a “we didn’t click,” not even a story worth telling—just nothing. And yet I find myself listening to friends complain about being single while juggling two or three guys at once, recounting dates they’ve gone on this year alone, but oh, woe are they, still being single after a baker’s dozen or more of dates.
They’re exhausted, apparently.
I nod. I sympathize. I try not to laugh—or scream.
Because the most action I get these days is arguing with spam accounts on Grindr. Bots or the clearly multiple fake accounts using a hot Asian man for a profile pic. He’s 4 miles away, always 4 miles, and he truly wants to know what my job is because it’s always his second question. There’s the blank torsos tapping me from three states away and conversations that dissolve before they even begin. If this is modern romance, I seem to have been quietly excluded from it.
Apps feel transactional, joyless, and demoralizing. Small talk feels like unpaid labor. Everyone wants confidence, chemistry, sparkle—but I’m over here just trying to remember what it feels like to be chosen at all.
The Pressure to Be Fine
And no, I don’t want a pep talk about how “it’ll happen when you least expect it.”
What hurts most is the pressure to be fine about all of this. To be the funny gay one. The supportive brother. The emotionally evolved friend who can laugh it off and listen to you for hours, days, weeks, months about all the sex, dates, love interests, and never asked once. Never asked about your dating life. The holidays demand gratitude even when you’re grieving a life you thought you’d have by now.
Being gay already meant rewriting the script. Being single during the holidays feels like being told I rewrote it wrong. Being politically aware—politically affected—means knowing when to stay quiet just to keep the room comfortable.
When Survival Is Enough
So yes—this year, I’m depressed. I’m lonely. I don’t want to sit at a table where my worth feels implied instead of affirmed, where my silence is mistaken for agreement. I don’t want to perform joy when what I really need is rest, space, and honesty.
If you feel this way too—if the holidays feel less magical and more like emotional whiplash—please know this: your life is not a consolation prize. Your timeline is not a failure. And opting out, pulling back, or protecting your heart this season doesn’t make you bitter—it makes you human.
Some years, survival is the celebration.
And honestly? That’s enough.
