Twixtmas Thoughts: On Limbo, Ledgers, and Leaving Other People’s Opinions Behind

There’s a strange hush that settles in the days between Christmas and New Year.






Time goes syrupy. The house smells faintly of yesterday. You don’t quite know what day it is, and honestly you don’t care. Twixtmas lives in the cracks. A pause. A limbo. A holding breath.

It’s always in this space that I start thinking about what comes next.

This year, that thinking has been quieter but deeper. Less fireworks, more foundations.




I’ve applied formally for the courses I want to do. I’ve also applied to study further beyond that. I’ve looked at every realistic route: distance learning, for Autumn next year, my first-choice university, the Open University. I’ve cast my net wide. Not because I don’t know what I want, but because I do know how fragile the word “allowed” can become when you’re chronically ill. I also know that I am making the right choice, and no matter what, I am NOT giving up on my childhood dream! 😁📚 🏺

When you become chronically ill, what you “deserve” to aim for becomes a topic of debate.
A conversation.
A ledger. Honestly, it's a bit rude! haha! 😂

Suddenly, your ambition is something people feel entitled to audit.

Even when your health is stable, you are expected to compare yourself constantly. To your old self. To an imaginary “healthier” version. To other people’s comfort levels. You start second-guessing not your dreams, but whether you’re permitted to have them.

People love discussing what those with chronic disabilities ought to be doing with their lives. Whether you’re aiming too high. Whether you should be “more realistic.” Whether success might somehow be inappropriate, exhausting, or unfair.

It’s fascinating how quickly support turns into supervision. Or policing, which would be fair enough if it was by people qualified, with a good track record who actually want good for others... it's not though! haha!



That is energy I am absolutely leaving behind in 2025. With a small, polite wave. Possibly a laugh.

My wide net this year wasn’t uncertainty. It was strategy. It was resilience. It was understanding that my worth does not hinge on one institution’s decision, or one body’s unpredictability, or one person’s idea of what is sensible for me.

And if the past few years have taught me anything, it’s this:
I do not need permission to want a full, meaningful, intellectually alive life. I am SO GRATFEUL TOO! Because I have the opportunity to do so, but also, one of my former teachers reached out and offered to do my reference for my application! I was bawling  like a little baby with warmth and joy! hahaha! I am so sensitive that I cry at most everything, and someone telling you that they believe in your potential? Honestly I don't know how to describe that as the most heart-warming and affirming thing ever, but it is! I do not know how to describe this subject, other than it is my first love! 😍

💝

As for New Year’s resolutions, I’m not interested in punishing myself with grand vows or performative reinvention. I’ve done enough surviving to last a lifetime. 2025 was the White Rabbit for me. That little bunny got me good! I SPENT HALF THE YEAR FEELING LIKE I WAS DRAGGED THROUGH A HEDGE! HAHA! 




Next year, I’m choosing kindness.

Kindness to others, yes. That one matters.
But also kindness to myself.

Kindness when my body slows me down.
Kindness when my brain doubts itself.
Kindness when the world tries to shrink my horizon to something “manageable.” 

Education is agency, agency is power, power is autonomy. I know that sounds a little absurdly cheesy to say out loud, but something I have noticed the more I study is how little critical thinking people actually do, and how much time people spend on their phones, using that much taken-for-granted skill to draw comparisons... Or to be beastly to each other. I don't want to, or have to participate in that and that's one of the may reasons I just left a CVID support group on Facebook I know I will always have CVID. No, I won't be trying to treat it with crystals, organic foods or meditation... I just couldn't deal with the supervision on there or the way people compared symptoms, or scaremongered each other. Thinking back to what the consultant who diagnosed me back in 2019 said several years ago... "The key word here, is Variable... things vary person to person, stay off the internet!" Honestly, valid. That's why I started this blog... Be the change you wanna see right? I will be supported, I just don't think a support group full of people cyber-bullying each other is the way I will find that support... I can't believe I am saying this in print, but going forward I think I will trust the clinicians, more than people on the internet who have this disease... *welp*.. there it is. Screenshot that for later I guess! 





Twixtmas reminds me that not all growth is loud. Some of it happens quietly, in the pause, when you stop justifying yourself and start trusting your own voice again.

So here’s to the limbo.
Here’s to wide nets and steady hearts.
Here’s to a new year where we stop tallying what we’re “allowed” to want, and start living as though we belong here already. 

We do.


(I'll still be eating the grapes under the table though! haha! Not because I am desperate, but the awkward way I talk to hot people really really needs to stop! ) 


With my heart, 💖

Clare Alexandra 

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