Over here we get the presents on x-mas eve - december 24th.
I am 18 and an only child… so this is not a story to be read by x mas lovers… but by those home alone without their family so they know what they have spared themselfs…
I envy you. Damn… do I envy you guys who can get drunk under the x mas tree…
7:00 AM: I get home from my first rave… been fun…
8:00 AM: I go to bed
2:00 PM: I get up and finish the present for my rents
5:00 PM: Dinner
6:00 PM: We watch home videos from when I was little … embarassing as hell
7:00 PM: Quarrel the first: Dad is grumpy and I am grumpy cause he is grumpy and tell him not to be grumpy so he gets grumpier.
8:30 PM: I am almost falling asleep… didnt sleep much tonigh… today.
9:00 PM: The evil end
We stand around the x mas tree and mom wants to sing. I dont know any x mas songs by heart…
Dad films everything… As I have a mature hangover I am not too pleased… tell him to come over and take a look at his present too. He ignores me. I get grumpy.
Dad tells as to stick x mas up our arses and walks into the living room - watching Curly Sue.
Finally he gets back - they take a look at the calendar I made for em and I kind o hug my cd player and count my money Dad sneaks away to the telly.
Mom and me start making fun of x mas and laugh our asses off until she says “poor x mas tree… under heathens” or something to that extent and I get the idea that the tree really has feelings. After all they just cut it for this purpose and now we are fucking it up.
So I lay down under the tree and stare up into the gold and red glitter stuff in it and start crying silently while mom keeps on laughing kind of bitter.
Then I stop crying and start to be zynical again.
Now I went downstairs, plugged in my new cd player and am here.
I’m almost through with that nightmare. Right now my rents are at my sister’s new house settling down for a long winter’s nap. It’s still kind of a touchy situation, since I don’t think my psychotic Dad is quite yet over my sister’s interracial marriage (My stance on this is quite firm. If you’ve got a problem with her, him or my Godchild, you’ve got a problem with me, and considering the fact that I can bench almost 300 lbs, and and my bro in law is a US Army Reserves Ranger guy, noone seeminly does). People are still kinda wierd around me, especially since the 1st anniversary of my already failed marriage was last week (oh, please, don’t get me started). Last of all, the youngest of the sibs, who is pagan (oooooooh, the rents luv that) left early to go party with her friends.
We’ve got one last dinner tomorrow, then the the parental units leave, and everything will revert to what passes for normality.
Hang in there, guys. As soon as you can, start making your own holiday rules. After years of trying to do the family thing at Xmas, I finally said screw it. At about 22,holidays became something to be spent with friends (and later my husband) behind locked doors in our own way. This year it includes fajitas, scotch, videos, and a new board game. Well, sex, too, but that’s not just for holidays.
I’ll go see the dysfunctional family from time to time, but never on holidays anymore. After a few years they stopped expecting it, and we all get along much better. My dad (who kicked me out of the house many years ago for contemplating fornication) now considers me his favorite child, probably because I’m never in their face.
Whammo… my passport saies I am 18… and I think I oughta believe that one.
I hope when I come home tonight after going out they are not up yet - so I can lay down under the x mas tree and have some whiskey… I guess smoking a joint in the house is out of reach… but I ll enjoy my Glen Fiddich…
Dad sneaks away to the telly.