At Christmastime I often think about people who would like to celebrate but can’t. Many of us experienced that when Christmas 2020 was cancelled, but this year as usual, families and friends will gather to make merry. Recently I met two people who will be spending the holiday season on their own and I want to share their stories. Mehmet is a young man working as a bartender in a Turkish restaurant where I sometimes eat. Two years ago his father died and then he lost nearly all his close relatives in the earthquake that happened in February this year – his mother, brother, brother’s wife and younger sister. Of family all he has is an emotionally distant uncle who wires him money every month to help him with his rent and a young nephew who occasionally facetimes with him.

Here in London Mehmet knows a handful of people and gets on well with his co-workers but mostly he spends his free time alone and despite some effort to online date there is nobody with whom he can have the kind of loving relationship that he once had with his family. And loving it was because Mehmet remembers, “we would share our dreams and fears, encourage each other, hug and play fight, sing and laugh together, and my family they were gentle souls – I could be myself around them.” I felt for Mehmet when he told me this, especially as Benjamin Zephaniah’s poem People Need People was on my mind, it being the day of the great poet’s passing.

I asked Mehmet how he manages to go through life without even one good friend who will make him feel like he belongs to a family. And this is what he replied, “When I wake in the morning I have two options. I can get upset or angry about my situation and sometimes I start my day with tears. But the other choice is to make best of the day and I help myself by seeing good things. I have a nice studio flat not far from work, money to eat good and I get better at doing things on my own like the cinema.” And what about Christmas this year? I asked Mehmet. “I think about what I will do when the restaurant is shut because normally I spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve with my family in Turkey. With all that has happened, the best I can do is go day by day. If it’s sunny I’ll be happy but I’m not sure about a walk. It may be hard for me to see others in their family groups.”

Resilient though he is, I admire how Mehmet is sensitive to his fragility and I notice this quality also in Maria whom I first met last year. Maria is a career woman who lives alone and only this year is she consciously remembering that she was persistently assaulted by a relative during her childhood. For the first time ever she won’t be joining her large family for Christmas celebrations because she doesn’t want to be in the same room as her perpetrator. (She has told her family that she’s going abroad with a friend.) Maria views her situation as bittersweet because she’s glad that she’s reconciling with her past and has the courage to honour her innate desire not to be in the same room as this relative who spent years harming her; but she is sad to forfeit days of lavish meals, games and karaoke, bonding with the relatives who have been good to her and watching the family children adore Christmas.

Maria has chosen not to tell her family about the abuse she went through because she imagines that it will instigate a messy family drama with her memories competing against her perpetrator’s likely insistence on his innocence. “There is one event that I could go to when I know that my abuser won’t be there,” said Maria, “but I’m still dealing with the shame that comes with having been abused. It’s not that I blame myself for what happened to me – after all I was just a terrified, bullied child – but if I’m honest I feel shame for just being related to this person. Does that sound stupid?” I tell her that any feelings she has are relevant and that it’s inspiring how she can articulate them.

After an unawkward silent pause Maria continued, “I’ve decided this Christmas will be a special one. I’ve learnt in the process of healing that like the command we give to a dog – heel – I need, as much as I can, to sit with myself and be patient. I might have some angry outbursts or tears but I feel strongly that I must take care of myself and honestly I don’t want to burden a friend with what I’m going through.”

My meetings with Mehmet and Maria reminded me that you never really know what’s going on with people until you share an intimate and honest conversation and how we must never take for granted genuine love and support from those who are familiar with us.