Charlton Hart: If I was alone this festive season I’d be lounging in my undies and scoffing cheese

The “Most Wonderful Time of the Year” has officially peaked and is sliding into that weird, nebulous twilight zone between Christmas and New Year’s Eve.

You know the one, where you eat leftover ham straight from the fridge like a heathen, forget what day of the week it is, and vaguely wonder if it’s socially acceptable to start drinking at 11am because time is a construct anyway.

For a lot of you, yesterday wasn’t a viral TikTok of a family in matching festive pyjamas.There was no chaotic, loud lunch with the right-wing uncle and screaming toddlers. It was quiet. Just you, and the creeping suspicion that everyone else on Earth was having a blast.

If it’s looking the same for New Year’s, I’m guessing your inner monologue is currently treating you with the same contempt usually reserved for a telemarketer at dinner time.

You’re asking yourself questions like: What is wrong with me? Do I matter? Does anyone actually care?

Stop it. Put the mental bat down.

I’m not writing this from a high horse.

I’m writing this as someone who has stared at the ceiling of a sticky rental in Tamworth, NSW, over the festive season feeling empty inside.

I was living in the country music capital for work. It’s a nice enough place, if you like big golden guitars and heat that feels like God is holding a magnifying glass over you.

My family were a six-hour flight away. I couldn’t afford the ticket home, and I couldn’t get the time off.

I hadn’t had the chance to make friends amid the chaotic, messy, expensive, and logistical nightmare that is modern life.

So there I was, alone. Eating meals that were 80 per cent carbohydrates and 20 per cent self-pity.

I scrolled through Instagram (big mistake), seeing photos of my friends at the beach, or clinking glasses in a swanky holiday home.I felt like I had failed at the basic human task of belonging.

Here is the ground truth I wish someone had slapped me with back then: Solitude is not a measure of your worth.

I know, I know. That sounds like something you’d read in a Tony Robbins book, but I’m cynical enough to know that sarcasm is just a defence mechanism. Sometimes you have to drop it to say something real.

The silence you feel right now. It’s not an indictment. It’s a blank page.

While everyone else is currently arguing over who has to wash the roasting pan, you have the rarest commodity of all: peace.

You have the autonomy to decide what this next week looks like.

If you want to spend New Year’s Eve re-watching Stranger Things and eating cheese in your underwear, power to you. Just make sure the blinds are closed.

Heck, drive to the beach at midnight and scream at the ocean, go for it (just maybe don’t wake the locals in Scarborough; they’re touchy).

Try not to sit there feeling like a spare part. You are navigating a world that is increasingly disconnected and frantic.

The fact that you are here, reading this, getting through it. That’s resilience.

You are valuable. You are enough, exactly as you are.

Have a safe and joyous new year WA.

Ps: Eat the good chocolate out of the Favourites box first and bin the Cherry Ripes. You deserve it.