Family. Christmas. Please, just shoot me now please (long, LJ-ish)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I need to go home for winter break, because A) I live in a dorm and am getting kicked out for the duration and B) my parents informed me that I would be flying back east for break. Okay, I won’t fight an offer of free room and board, laundry, and home cooking for most of a month.

About two weeks ago I mentioned to my mother that I’m considering not doing the annual "pile into the car, drive eight hours through Outer Bumblefuck, spend several days visiting relatives I see for a few hours once a year in a stupidly huge family gathering*, impose upon said relatives to put me up, then drive eight hours home, all because it’s a holiday that none of my immediate family celebrates**. I don’t feel particularly close to any of these relatives, owing to the fact that I see them for a few hours in the midst of a big party, once a year. At this point we’re not even sure when/where one part of the party will be, because Grandma no longer lives in the house which she used to (which my Crazy Aunt has owned all along). Despite the fact that there are two family-owned houses apparently within an easy 15 minutes of Grandma’s apartment, we’re probably going to have a post-Christmas gathering in a conference room in the apartment complex on the 28th, which means we need to stay in Ohio until then.

For me that means, “You will be trapped in a single room with twenty-some other people for hours”, which means “if I’m not drunk I’m going to be extremely panicky.”

And my sister is flying in from California, but she’s flying into Philadelphia the day before we drive up there, so it’ll be four people in my parent’s tiny car for eight hours, not just three. And we’ll drive immediately to my cousin’s house in Cleveland, where he’s having a Christmas eve party. Which means I will need to spend eight hours in close proximity to people, then get out of the car and go to a party where I only know half the people and can’t just leave when I start to get uncomfortable (which will be after about three seconds).

We’ll spend Christmas day sitting around a hotel in Cleveland, because we don’t have anywhere else to stay and it’s not like there’s anything to do on Christmas day, especially not in scenic Cleveland. After that we may stay in a hotel there, or in Canton, where my grandmother’s old house is, or at the house owned by Crazy Aunt, if she invites us (she and my mother don’t get along at all) and if there are enough beds, which there probably aren’t. My parents haven’t made reservations anywhere yet, nor have we been invited to stay anywhere! What fun we’re having so far!

Meanwhile, I’ve been unable to finish my grad school applications - which are due on Jan. 15 - and my senior thesis is due on Feb. 14. Since the quality of those two things basically will decide whether I work at Borders for the rest of my life, or eventually become a productive member of society, I’m viewing them as pretty much the most important things in my world right now.

Clearly, it’ll be great fun, spending a week either in a hotel room with my family, or in a house with relatives who don’t like me. Throughout all this, of course, I will be lectured on how my hair is inappropriate for a young lady, my degree is useless, what I want to study in grad school is useless, and how if I’d grow my hair out, wear makeup, and wear dresses like a proper lady I’d find a nice guy to date in no time. And how all the anti-gay ballot measures in November were such great successes, and how Obama spells ruin for the country***, and so on.

So…the other day I mention to my mother that I’m incredibly stressed, no one knows what the hell is going on as for Christmas celebrations, and so I’m thinking about not going. My reasoning was “I have perfectly legitimate reasons for not subjecting myself to something I will not enjoy, I’m an adult, so I think this should be my decision to make.”

My mother apparently heard, “My daughter hates me and her aging grandmother and there is no way I can leave such a massive decision in her clearly incompetent hands.”

Since then I’ve tried to raise the topic a few times, and been told both by my mother and father that they’re not going to discuss it. This leaves me with the choice of “Be miserable from now until we finally get back to my parent’s house sometime around the 29th over this” or “Cause my parents some insane emotional devastation by preserving my sanity.”

That’s where I am, which is to say I am at a complete loss. I really don’t want to hurt any feelings. The extended family hasn’t seen me in a year and thus will not give a damn if I show or not, but my parents are acting as if I’m disowning them. If I had the money, I would just buy a plane ticket, fly up to Ohio on the 27th, suffer through the gathering on the 28th, drop my sister off at the Cleveland airport, and ride home with my parents***. Unfortunately, I’m ass-broke and can’t really afford to spend a hundred and fifty bucks on another plane ticket. Or anything - which is another point, no one is getting any gifts from me this year because I have no money, which is going to be an Issue, but at this point, everything is an issue.

So. My family is completely insane and Christmas, a holiday which I do not celebrate is driving me ever-closer to a nervous breakdown, because no matter what it’s going to suck ass. Mockery of my family is welcome, as are any suggestions for defusing the situation, offerings of sympathy, or empathetic similar stories of how the holidays make everyone even crazier than they already are.

*Catholic family. Eight aunts, eight uncles, nine cousins, one grandmother, one sister, two parents, one great-aunt, and one uncle-by-marriage’s-mother.
**Mom, dad, and sister are Jewish. I’m not religious in any way and if I had my say would do absolutely nothing for any winter holiday beyond using New Years as an excuse to get completely blitzed.
***I’m pretty sure that in most families the whole ‘pick up Daughter A from Philadelphia airport on Dec. 19th, pick up Daughter B from Newark airport on the 23rd, drive nine hours to Ohio on Dec. 24th, drop Daughter B off at Cleveland airport on 29th, drive nine hours home on Dec. 30th’ thing might be regarded insane. It’s totally normal to my parents.

2

Don’t you have a communicable disease that would make it very irresponsible to be around your loved ones at Christmas? Much as you want to be there, I think maybe you should put their interests first.

3

Break the chain now or put up with the same insanity the next year…and the year after…and the next year…

4

Just be firm about not going. If they’ll give you the chance to talk about it, explain that you’re drowning in one-time-only paperwork and you’re on the edge of a freaking breakdown without the added stress. If they won’t, well, just go on home. When they all pile into the car, tell them you’re not going. What are they going to do, force you into the car at gunpoint? When they get all hurt and offended that you didn’t tell them, explain that you tried to talk to them about it and they refused to discuss the matter. Any surprise is purely on them.

5

oh yeah…
Fambly

My Uncle Brewster… only got to know him for three yrs, as I was too young cool and stupid to actualy talk to him… I restore tube raduos for a hobby… Uncle Brewster built the things from scratch… found out after he died that he corresponded with Einstein and Edison…

My Great Grandma
She played with the children of the plains “Indians” when they still lived in teepees, and followed the last of the buffalo. Of course she was just this old lady of no value to a cool kid like me (I would have paid my first year scholarship fees to spend 2 hours with her and a tape recorder)

My Stepfather… A dull old man who talked seldomly, mostly because of his efforst in Holland during the war, and the deafness from the mortar explosion I never learned about until after he died. I didn’t realize anything about him until I curated a military museum and found out his unit had more or less saved a small town in Holland.

My Grandama, who was wise enough to not “bore” me with the story of coming to Alberta as a settler, and who shared a love of Asimov, Hienlien and Clarke. It was only in her final yrs, when I was patient and uncool enough to let her tell me what a August prairie fire meant (boiled bone soup and straw pudding for most of the winter).

Yeah… the old and odd people in your famly are boring and not worth the time.

FML

6

FML, while what you say may be true in some cases, that doesn’t mean the person has to take abuse either. No one has to go where they know they will be told they don’t measure up, and the path they have chosen, their work, their studies, is futile.

7

Do you think your mom wasn’t “incredibly stressed” when she was bringing you up? Do you think there weren’t ever times when she didn’t “feel like” being a mom? Did you never go through a “my mom can’t do anything right” phase?

Suck it up and do your best to have a good time. Remember “only the boring get bored.” It’s once a year, it’s your family, and you can handle not being 100% comfortable and entertained for a few days. Adults do, now and then, put up with things they don’t much enjoy.

8

  1. Find somebody who’s going on some fabulous vacation or a Disney cruise. (Preferably someone within driving distance of where you go to school.)

  2. Offer to house-sit/pet-sit.

  3. Tell your parents whatever you need to about why you’re doing it, and give them the phone number, but not the address. (Yeah, I know, #3 is supposed to be “profit”).

A friend of my son started doing this in college and spends all winter holidays on a ranch in southern Colorado, absolutely alone except for several cows, a couple of horses, and a couple of dogs. The ranch owners actually pay him!

9

Unfortunately, I already bought a plane ticket home, and I can’t afford to eat the cost. Plus, not going home at all will just create even more drama, because my parents will feel like it’s a deep personal insult.

I guess I’m feeling torn because part of me would like to go just for the sake of family peace. On the other hand, it’s a stupid tradition and I have more important things that need to get done.

Full Metal Lotus, thank you for those lovely anecdotes, if not wholly snide and pointless anecdotes about your family. They sound interesting. I wish I had interesting people related to me.

[qoute=even sven] Do you think your mom wasn’t “incredibly stressed” when she was bringing you up? Do you think there weren’t ever times when she didn’t “feel like” being a mom? Did you never go through a “my mom can’t do anything right” phase?
[/quote]
I’m sure there were times when she was stressed, like anyone who chooses to have kids. And depressed. In fact, I know that for a fact, because for most of my childhood she was severely depressed and did nothing about it. That’s, according to her, part of why I have such a severe problem with anxiety. I don’t see how that should factor into my decision either way.

And I get that sometimes people have to do things they don’t enjoy. I really don’t want to go to work this morning before I go to class, but I’m going to go anyway - because there is a tangible benefit that both me and my coworkers will get from me going. I don’t see how anyone will truly benefit from me going to visit distant relatives.

10

Quitcherbitchin’ and go spend time with these people before they die.

Your grad school apps and your thesis won’t mean shit to you out in the real world anyways, and you’ll find yourself regretting that you didn’t spend more time getting to know your family when you could have.

11

If you decide to go bring some earplugs for the car ride and work on all of your paperwork on the ride there and back. Be sure to tell your parents that you have other stuff that needs to be done, family or no family, and that you need to stay home but if they are going to force you to go that you will be unable to sing carols or discuss your mom’s new haircut on the ride because you will be busy. Then when you are with your family try to enjoy them while you’ve got them if you can, but if they insist on being judgmental jerks have a drink and go work on your thesis in the hallway.

Also, be open to this possibly being a positive experience. I was very nervous about Thanksgiving with my family this year and it managed to be a wonderful trip despite my previous worries, so who is to say that the same thing couldn’t happen to you?

12

Can you find something during that day that you absolutely have a precommitment to? The “hotel in Cleveland” might be near the soup kitchen in Cleveland, which might need a hand and could get you the hell out of Dodge for a couple of hours.

13

Coming from another stupidly large Catholic family, this ain’t happening. You just can’t keep in touch with that many people, especially once the grandkids (of which I’m the youngest) start moving out and having their own lives. There’s also likely to be a large age gap even between people of the same generation, which makes things worse because it’s harder to relate to people in different stages of life.

I don’t envy NinjaChick. Family gatherings like that can really suck.

14

Having an absurdly large Catholic family has nothing to do with it, and it’s not about keeping up with people throughout their entire lives or being close or any of that - it’s about taking a day or two ONCE A YEAR to spend time with the people in your family and maybe even :: gasp! :: try to enjoy yourself, or get to know more about them. NinjaChick is coming off as incredibly spoiled and ungrateful, saying she has “better things to do.”

I used to feel that way too, but now that I see family members slipping away due to accidents and illness, I wish that I’d had the wisdom and foresight to spend more time with them when I could, instead of bitching about how boring family get-togethers were when I thought I knew everything.

15

I also have a stupidly large Catholic family, as you say. Try this, just one time: give up the idea of having a good time, as you have already decided you won’t so it’s no loss. Instead, decide to see to it that somebody else has a good time. Call it an exercise in service to others or something.

You might be surprised at what happens.

This advice is compliments of my great aunt Lilly from the old country; I hope it serves somebody else as well asit did me, even if that person is not the OP.

16

I would totally play the school-work angle. You’re being responsible and planning for the future by not wanting to go, you really do have important stuff to work on that both you and your parents should really think takes priority.

17

Point taken. Still, I’ve always found such gatherings as rather boring myself. I don’t particularly like being probed about my love life, especially by a certain aunt who’s annoying about it, or trying to fit in with cousins who know each other better than they do me (or who are, in a couple cases, old enough to be my parents), or trying to talk to my half-deaf grandfather for whom English is a second language. Add in traveling and a hotel room stay and I’d go batty too.

And believe it or not, some people just don’t like being in big groups of people.

NinjaChick, plenty of hugs and sympathy here. Personally, I enjoy seeing certain family members, but I hate holiday gatherings of my mother’s family because there’s just too many people in one place that I’m not overly comfortable talking to. Actually, scratch that–there’s just too many people.

18

Thanks XJETGIRLX for saying what I didn’t have the guts to say outright.

I was once so self-absorbed that I actually almost had myself convinced that I really was “too busy” and “too stressed” to keep in contact with my family like I should have. In my case, the truth was I was depressed and didn’t want them to know, and I was so annoyed by their prying questions precisely because I could see the element of truth in them. I didn’t want to deal my family because I didn’t want to deal myself.

Amazingly, one of the things that helped get me out of that stage was some harsh words on the Dope. Thanks guys!

Now I’m looking at my third Christmas away from my family and wondering how I could have ever been so self-obsessed and childish as to act like I had more important things to do than give a bit of attention to the people who have been and will be a part of my life from the day I was born until the day that I die. Life goes fast, and there are few things you can count on. Family is one of them. Thats something worth putting above your personal dramas.

19

I sympathize with the desire not to go. I hate big crowds of people who feel they have the right to criticize every choice I make in life,. too, but can’t handle any of that mirrored back at them.

Given that you’ve already bought the ticket, my advice: Bring whatever you’ll need to work on your senior thesis and your grad school applications with you. Pay your social dues the day of the big party (if it ever happens), but plan to spend most of the holidays in the hotel room or whatever working on those things. Resurface for meals and bits of socialization (I find they’re more tolerable in drips and drabs personally) , but stand your ground on the need to do the work. Don’t argue with them “can’t this wait till after the holidays etc” - just smile and tell them to enjoy themselves while you get this work done.

Next year, if you really don’t want to be there despite knowing that your parents do want you there - book yourself out way ahead of time. Of course there’ll be flak when they realize you’re serious and you will hurt their feelings - there is no way you can not hurt their feelings in this situation other than knuckling under, at which point you’ll be hurting your feelings. You’ve got to decide whether your feelings matter more or less to you than your family’s feelings, and act accordingly.

20

You know, not everyone has nice families that support them or contribute positively in their lives. Lots of families are absolutely shitty, and there is no reason to maintain a relationship with such so-called “family.” In many cases, doing so is only enabling their psychoses. (just because you’re a mom, doesn’t make you immune from Borderline Personality Disorder)

This is not the situation in my family. But I have known plenty of people whose families were manipulative emotional vampires, and the very furtherest thing from a anything that could be “counted on.”. There is no obligation to play nice with such people just because they birthed you.

Not to say that is the case for the OP. But it rankles me to see everyone in the big “family is made of sunshine and puppies and you’re a big jerk” pileon. The facts, in a reasonable number of cases, are contrary.