Throughout the past two days my mood swings have been minute by minute...I'm slowly calming down after throwing up from being so upset and stressed out. My parents are asleep but I spent a few minutes stomping around the house....I'm just so angry...

I tend to have tunnel vision...aka...being so focused on one thing (usually negative) that I can't force myself to think about anything else. I feel like a failure, but my parents thought their Christmas was wonderful. I also feel it has nothing to do with what I got them. This whole gift giving has destroyed my mental health.

The DVDs are the items stuck in the tunnel vision. I screwed up trying to explain why I bought them and how cool they were, but I nearly had an anxiety attack trying to set them up to be excited about it and failed. I tried so hard to get movies they really like with a TON of classics from the 40s-60s and even though it was a great deal (I spent $80 for roughly 25-30 movies) it was a huge flop. My dad couldn't even read through the titles of just a small stack of the classics and once he said "and this one is called something or other"...it just really hurt my feelings. Later in the unwrapping I tried to explain what I had wanted to explain, that I wanted Dad to do his usual review search on a DVD player and that they weren't too expensive and my mom said "we can just watch them on our laptop". It was just a big flop and it made me feel really disappointed...and it was the majority of my gifts.

I want to look at the positive but it's hard...My mom *was* over the moon about the beautiful, heavy quilt I won for her. She was so tickled about it and said she had always wanted one but quality quilts were too expensive for her to buy and she decided to use it on her bed rather than keeping it a "needful thing" as in a tapestry. My dad was very excited about the Animal House book I got him, he said he had no idea that there was a book that the movie was based on, and I told him it was a true account of the man who lived in Animal House. He also loved the Alton Brown and especially the Jamie Oliver cookbooks I got for him and Mom, he got really excited about those and was waving those around. My mom was excitedly curious about a big Jonathan Strange book I got her. I read the cover and it seemed right up her alley. She also liked the Bridget Jones series I got her. She also got very excited about the two Christmas mugs I got her in a set, she's a sucker for holiday mugs. But she just went gaga over the quilt and she said she would have never guessed it. She assumed it was something I had made with Papa. I had all three of us open it up to see the design...it is a three-layer queen-size quilt and very beautiful...I won it in a $1 raffle. My ticket was 1 in 5000, and she commented how much she loves how lucky I am that I win cool stuff and I got to tell the story of meeting with the quilters. That's always my favorite part of Christmas, having a cool story to tell.

What bums me out is I felt I gave a crappy present to my brother. I could only give him a very small box of candy, and the intention was to find something more but I just didn't have the funds for it (after the move and without a job I was very limited with what I had to spare and presents for my parents were done months early while I was still working) and after seeing the terrific, well thought-of gifts he got me, all I could think about these past two days was "I have to make it up to him".

I sent a him a text saying that the candy was meant to bring back memories of the candy we ate when we were little and it was all I could afford at the time, but now after a few paychecks I saved up some money to send him some gifts that I thought he'd really enjoy and also some things he can enjoy with his Marine buddies. I told him "Technically, it's still the 12 days of Christmas, so gift giving is still in full swing!" I didn't mention that "saved money" was really my Christmas money. That bothers me a lot, but also only to an extent. It's a bummer I have to use my Christmas money to buy more Christmas presents, but at the same time, my brother means the world to me and I love buying gifts for my loved ones, and I had enough money to buy my brother really awesome Christmas presents, some "me-gifts", a hair cut, and (hopefully) enough money to treat my two-best friends to a meal or two when they come up.

I got him a professional harmonica (he loved his cheapie one), a 300-piece professional poker set and a game of Yahtzee that I can picture him and his Marine buddies playing (and I can even hear him cry out “Yahtzee!”) a big book of mad libs, and a Fandango gift card since he loves going to the movies. I’m very pleased with what I got him and I think he will love it!

My emotions have just been off the chart, it's all over the place. I think for next year I will pick out just pick out one or two presents for my friends and loved ones, quality over quantity. This whole 2nd post was me trying to calm myself down...it definitely helped.

I could use some hugs...