Saturday, December 25, 2010

Why i really hate X-mas

No i don't mean in a "Grinch like" i don't want anyone else to enjoy it either. My last real secular Christmas ended let's say poorly...
My Mother suffers from insanities as many and varied as traditions on Christmas morning. Being adopted she had always wanted to know her birth mother and biological family to the point where she was willing to accept a woman named Paula into our lives. Paula seemed a nice enough person if somewhat delusional herself, and with her came her husband who i rarely saw and their two young children. My baby brother at the time was living in a private school in Albany where they could study his behavior 24/7 to understand his learning disabilities and behavior/mental issues. I'd gotten my certification to babysit and perform first aid at the local college and was expected to babysit Paula's young children constantly with no pay as part of my rent.
I was 12... I was set to be Mary in the Christmas pageant that year, a high honor considering i'd typically been cast as the present nobody wanted, the elf with low self esteem and the angel that was just a little quirky ( think Larry the Cucumber). My mother was going to go pick my brother up from Albany that night and my father was working, i'd been looking forward to the time with my mother and brother but was informed last minute that i instead would be babysitting Paula's kids while she and my mother did some last minute shopping in the city. I relented on one condition... be back in time for me to be in my pageant that night. As they were going out the door Paula whispered to me, "Don't count on it." I was so mad but what could i do? And besides my mother would make sure they were back on time right?
10 o'clock came and went... then midnight... her little boy peed the bed, her daughter had a nightmare... 1 am. or shortly thereafter they came in the door laden with bags. I was mad. I asked where they had been that it had taken so long to get back, i asked if they'd remembered i was supposed to be somewhere hours ago. "Paula wanted to shop" insisted my mother as if that was enough of an explanation to avoid any responsibility. "But i was supposed to be at church..." Paula laughed a little bit and said "I'm your cousin."
"You're NOT my cousin." i whispered. It felt brave... This woman had no actual relation to me... she had convinced my mother that she was her cousin not with paperwork but with a similar build in her face that i never could see and with a "psychic feeling" that they belonged to each other. It was b.s. but it was life with my mother's ever evolving idiosyncranicities and madness. It wasn't brave, it was most decidedly stupid. If this was a movie or a story i am fairly sure there would have been the traditional "What did you say?" followed by either a retraction or swelling music and a brave gesture of defiant youth in reiterating the statement louder. What there was instead was a fist knocking me down onto a couch face first. This woman was short but not light, at nearly 300 pounds she was about double my tall but chubby weight and all of it came down knee first into my ribcage. She beat me...
I'd been hit before, by my mom and her plastic hairbrush that she broke over my jaw attempting to spank me, by fellow students ( i used to thank people who hit me in the face for saving me the cost of paying the orthodontist bill by straightening my teeth for me ) and in more extreme cases by fellow students, many of them older, who had a club named Kids Killing Cat... lovely moniquer right? who beat my brother and i one day with boards with nails stuck in them. (One of them has actually apologized, my friend James asked me how long after that he asked me out... yeah, i guess that doesn't really count.)
I'd been hit, but this was an adult beating me and she was pissed off. I remember my brother trying to help me and my mother holding him back telling him that i had been a bad girl and i deserved this for being disrespectful to my elders. The beating went on for what seemed like forever and no one stopped her. She stopped herself when she was too worn out to hit me with any real force. Panting, she stayed on my chest a bit longer then let me up and told me to go to her daughter's room. I couldn't stand. My mother and she picked my up under the arms, dragged me there and threw me onto the floor of her daughter's room and shut the door. I was alone, i didn't remember her kids getting up but they must have at some point. I rolled onto my side and coughed. Mixed in with the spit i was choking on was blood. When the door opened i had been expecting an apology... for no earthly reason... what i got was a terse, "when you are ready to apologize to Paula, you can come out and we'll leave. I can't believe how badly you embarrassed me tonight." I...i...
I have always been a creature of impracticality but with that comes a heavy dose of creativity. I couldn't bring myself to apologize for putting my body in the way of Paula's fist but they were expecting some kind of apology.  I got up, slowly using the bed and walked even slower out to the kitchen. "I'm sorry..." i said pausing but not breathing so i could tel myself it was one big phrase. "i got blood on your kids carpet." "Well there is going to be blood in the kids' Christmas cookies this year too" she said displaying the single scratch i had managed to get in in an attempt to defend myself.
I was excused to the car just after 3:30 am Christmas morning, it was freezing cold and i sat there and had probably the most worst decisions of my life to make. Do i report this? My mother would deny it, and be blamed for it... I would be removed from my home... and placed with the people who had been suing my parents for custody of me for 4 years at that point. So at 12 i'm sitting in a car at 3:30 am Christmas morning a walking bruise and asking myself which is worse? Do i want to be beat or raped? I decided being beaten was by far the better answer. Almost an hour later my mother and brother came down the stairs and out to the car and we went home.
My Father freaked out, by then i was turning a darker shade of purple and looked pretty alarming. My mother tried to convince him that it was my fault and failed. I tried to convince him that this was still better than me being dragged out of the house to live with my mother's parents. I succeed. We all sat down to open the presents we'd been eying under the tree for weeks. Mine were plentiful though as we opened them it became clear it was a misnomer... what greeted me under the tree was individually wrapped socks and underpants, my father had let mom do all the shopping and mine had been done at the dollar store. I was then instructed to bring Christmas cookies to the neighbors houses and forbidden from hiding my bruises... I snuck my scarf and hat and gloves in my jacket and but them on around the other side of the big trees where mom couldn't see me and refused all invitations to come in, removing them in the same place before coming inside again. What to my wondering eyes should appear returning home but mom... destroying all the ornaments, throwing them hard into the box of decorations, since i had ruined Christmas for her and then.... she kicked me out.
When i was 14 my dad did the best thing ever by kicking her out instead. His following girlfriends insisted he spend Christmas with their family and one year i even went along sat in the back bedroom watching movies and everyone forgot i was there. When i was 20 we opened presents one night it was small and fake in a way i couldn't stomach but it wasn't even on Christmas night. If i had a husband... If i had kids... I might be sitting at the foot of a tree all lit up and sparklie, singing carols and drinking egg nog ( well nog ... i'm egg intolerant) but i've gotten a tree... put it up and decorated and it just feels... wrong somehow... I love Christmas service with the candles and pageantry but i am sworn off typical x-mas for a time undisclosed... please understand that i just don't want to play with this fake Norman Rockwell image of a perfect happy Christmas day. I am much more satisfied with quiet lights and nog.