CURRENTS
30 November 2018, 10:31
It’s cold, I’m bored, and melancholy. Instead of sitting here, just being nebulously sad and uncomfortable, I decided to write. Feel free to read, skip or make note of the content forthcoming. Heh.
It’s the holidays again, and we are sliding out of Turkey Day into fucking X-mas hell. Yes, you can tell the holidays hold a special place in my heart. I have never had good holidays, ever since I was little until, well, now… We are going to get a wee bit personal here, just so you should navigate away to puppy videos or porn if this makes you uncomfortable. I hear being so personal is a horrible thing to be on the internet, but I’ve never listened to anyone. My life is too insignificant and banal for anyone to give much of an interest in, and I do have a little bit of anonymity and a lot of zero-fucks-given, of which I count on to make this a safe environment in which to share with youse-alls.
When I was wee, I had a bit of a tumultuous childhood. I don’t mind talking about it, and indeed when I do, I talk in a very disconnected headspace about it, almost as if I was describing a character in a story. It wasn’t the best of rearings, but as I’ve gone through this world, it is indeed, not the worst. Some of you may know, I grew up in an environment of extreme physical and psychological abuse, with violence being a part of my life. For a very long time, there would be a cyclical ramp up of events, with tensions and intensity of violence and agitation peaking about twice a year. Decembers and Julys are when things got so bad, the police had to be called out to my house to sort things out. Back then, the police would come out and separate my parents, talking to my mom, while me and my dad had to go to the movies or something. My mom would invariably NOT press charges – really – not do ANYTHING. She was a foreigner in a foreign land so she couldn’t really escape, and when it got to be where she could, she…. just didn’t. My dad was a silent, looming sort of man, and my mom was a constant geyser of vulgarity and hate, just never, ever shutting up and always spewing some of the most horrendous shit you would ever hear from a human. I don’t know if she was like that before she married my dad and the abuse from him turned her into a rabid honey badger of a woman, but in thinking about it, it really doesn’t matter much now HOW this situation was created – it existed then and doesn’t now, and I am the product of it.
Anyway, the ramp-ups started as weekly sessions of arguments and fights – with each week growing shorter and shorter and each session growing more violent. This symphony of dysfunction would all coda on July or December, with the calling of the cops, and the cessation (for a while) of all interaction in my family with each other – until – it would start again.
During the holidays, the traditional would happen. Decorations, and food preparations would commence and almost feel like a requirement. If only we did it RIGHT or did ENOUGH of it, maybe this Thanksgiving/Christmas would end up like everybody else’s. My parents bought presents, made food, and argued. The house would look like a literal lighted wonderland of decorations, fake santas, wreaths, plastic trees, a nativity neither of my parents believed in, presents, colors, lights, etc. So, everything was awash in all this glitter and joy (that I love to this day), but was accompanied by a growing darkness that brought the inevitable and the unavoidable at the end.
Years of this makes me very schizophrenic in this regard. I love the lights and colors, I love the niceness and the feeling of “event” and “spectacle” of Christmas. I have hope that it will always be grand and happy… and safe. But. I always start having an uncomfortableness in my body, and sadness that I can’t shake. I’ll have times when I am damn near tears, and seeing someone’s family photo is a crap shoot on whether I’ll start bawling or be filled with joy. This has always happened. I think. I will always happen. The only thing I think I can do is try to make new memories to accompany and distract me from what is physically happening to me.
And that brings us to “lately”.
So, 20 years ago, I had met Ken and for the next 11 years, Holidays weren’t really celebrated. He was a sad being, because of the loss of him mom, and he was a quiet and kind soul. We just ambled through life and didn’t make it traditional or anything. Just a meal and peace, I would guess, was the theme of that time. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t healing. It was blanking out the holidays, which, I was fine with.
And then. He died a couple weeks before Christmas. You can imagine, and I’ve written about it before, so I’m not going to go into it here. But suffice it to say, this event put me on a path towards the south, and the next couple of years had me spend the holidays, alone and in a strange land. It was a wholly surreal and broken time that I don’t really remember. I do remember that time I had “friends” but, I thinking back, I was very alone, and very lonely.
Ahhh. Then came Doug. The holidays, to him, had to be Norman Rockwell Traditional or it was a failure and abhorrent. Unless we had all the food, it was a failure. He continually complained noone loved him enough to give him presents (I did give him one, every year) and it was a failure. We didn’t have kids or we weren’t a real family, so we couldn’t celebrate because it wasn’t real, so all that was a failure. Even when I put up decorations, he went through the motions, and the only one hoping for some special feeling during the holidays was me. So 7 years of holidays were a failure.
And then, just before Halloween, I found out he cheated on me. A little bit before Thanksgiving he left me (and I didn’t have water at my house for a week). A little before Christmas, I went to the emergency room when I broke up a dog fight. Then I gave up a dog to the shelter and it got accidentally euthanized a week before Christmas. Then I cut my foot open with an exacto knife ON Christmas. So…. 2017 didn’t really redeem the holidays for me.
It’s a year from all that now. And I sit here, and I feel the familiar old sadness coming back – but now I don’t know WHAT is causing it and I can’t get rid of it. I have changed so much from last year, and just about everything around me feels uncomfortable and suspicious. I have lights and colors up at the house, and I have a little hope that things will be all right. But the waves of past baggage and emotion engulf the hope I have every day and I have to dig for it to bring it back. Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I’m not. But I try everyday. I feel again, like a stranger in a strange land and uncomfortable in my skin. But now, I have all sorts of new things causing me to be blind to the good parts of this season. I am DESPERATELY trying to stay positive and not to let it show. But it’s getting hard to let my guard down since, I’ve been slapped in the face, these last few times I tried to relax and feel everything was good with the world.
I don’t know why I wrote this, other than I was thinking that people are thinking that I’m crazy these days. Wondering why I am like I am, especially during such a wonderful time of year. I’m trying real hard and it IS 100x better this year than last year. It’s just hard to fight a lifetime of history to eek out a nice little present.
That’s why my christmas smile is forced. That’s why I’m quiet. That’s why I look sad.
I’m kinda hoping this (above) could be some catharsis that will let me let go of a bunch of the weight pressing on me so I don’t ruin the holidays for those around me.
Hope springs eternal.
