I don’t know what to do.

I was scrolling through different websites the other day looking for those last little bits for Christmas gifts and stocking fillers. It was a task that was taking up a lot of my time and I feel like after an hour or so of it I was losing the will to live and also I wasn’t fully engaged with it.

Anytime I thought ‘oh, my kid might like that’ I added it to the basket and paid for it. I figured I’d probably end up with stuff I mostly didn’t regret buying and one or two things I maybe did. But I don’t buy Christmas gifts for that many people. I don’t have a lot of family, I don’t have a lot of friends. Close family (including my ex husband) means that I shop for exactly three people.

And maybe I find that small number hard? Maybe I secretly want to have more people in my life where it wouldn’t be weird to get each other jokey little Christmas gifts? Have I got myself into this Chrismas Dilemma because of loneliness?

I bought a Christmas gift for my on/off person. As I was scrolling through different websites I came across a little thing that I thought ‘I think he might like this’ and without thinking about it, I bought it. There was an initial feeling after I got the confirmation of purchase email where I thought ‘what have I done?’ but I think my response to that feeling was ‘maybe it will get lost in the post and I won’t have to deal with it all’ and I think that’s just a perfect indication of how I engage with awkwardness.

Because I don’t know what to do now. Do I tell him? We don’t have any plans to meet up before Christmas and, generally speaking in the 18 months that I’ve known him, we’ve never had plans to meet. My brain is having a terrible time even picturing what it would be like to say to this person ‘oh, I bought you a Christmas gift’ so it just refuses to imagine it.

What do I do? What would you do? Help.