This will likely be my first holiday season w/o my AH as my house is a war zone. As much as I would love to have him the H*LL out of our house, I can't. If I could, I'd be putting my energy into decorating festively, keeping the house nice and clean and pretty smelling, having a holiday party and baking cookies!
Since he will likely be lurking around and I may even have to leave to stay at a friend's house, I plan on doing things like baking cookies with them, maybe helping a friend decorate or plan a holiday party.
My bigger fear is the huge family parties where I show up by myself and everyone looks at me like UH OH and asks me what's happened. I suppose I could do damage control proactively and have my mom explain to the rest of the very enmeshed family what is going on in my life and not to talk to me about it, but then how awkward is that, with the elephant in the room? Only thing worse than having to tell 20 different people that my AH is going to be out of my life soon is having them all look at me with that pity in their eyes. Yuck. I don't want to be pitied, I got myself into this, it was my fault too, and I can get myself out. Maybe that's me being stubborn but I always hated people feeling bad for me.
But I have a lot to be thankful for even on the brink of my marriages demise as my AH stomps around the house calling me names non stop. I have great friends and family who have all been so helpful and attentive and ready to hang out and get me outta there any time I need!