so long, and thanks for all the fish.

at christmas' past, i was a hyper, excited, staying-awake-all-night with excitement kind of kid. the memories i have in that house, from early childhood, are still vibrant and alive with colour, scents, faces, voices, and food. later on, it was fun to watch other little kids get excited and munch the food. then the other little kids got older and i still showed up at my grandma's house to spend the evening listening to her go on and on about how fabulous all of her grandchildren were (except me. she couldn't find anything good to say about me. funny that.).

even funnier is that i pulled myself out of a very dark hole 4 years ago, landed a job in my chosen field, paid my bills and my taxes, and bought a condo. all by myself. except for a chunk of change i borrowed from grandma (all grandkids have borrowed, but i borrowed slightly more to mitigate the lack of a second income in my household). no spouse. i had, from my perspective, back at that time, two choices: live or die. i made a commitment to live, on the condition that i live well. the half-assed life i had created for myself was killing me. apathy and grief were killing me. i gave myself one last shot at trying one last time - with a time limit of a year. i gave it my all and i got results in 5 months. good thing, too, because plan b was to off myself if i found myself miserable at the end of the year.

i've made mind-boggling changes in the last 3.5 years. only family member who has told me he was proud of me was Dad.

i just returned from a visit with some relatives in oregon. it was a decent enough visit, given that i'm the black sheep in my family and fall on the receiving end of all kinds of shit and misery whenever i go there. most of the time it doesn't bother me, but this year i'm a little raw from the funeral and missing my dad. i'm a little raw from being thrown into the poorhouse and didn't have my usual requisite "going shopping" fuck you in my back pocket. it follows that i'm more emotional and less in control of my impulses, particularly the impulses to lash out angrily at other people.

here's my current favourite - yesterday, a game of scrabble with the boyfriend, my mom, and grandma. she started WHINING about a word i created with two blank tiles, and after she kept it up i flipped them both over and found there i had a tile flipped over. it was an R and i needed an E. i had an E. don't know how i fucked that up exactly, but i fucked it up just enough to be continually shamed at the table until another turn, when she told me "tided" wasn't a word and couldn't be used on the board (it's a word, i looked it up). she completely fucked me over and laughed at me, after i pointed it out in the dictionary. and had the gall, after that, to complain that i wasn't forgiving enough. i kept my composure. bitch didn't win at the table, but she's still occupying my head.

they go out. i stay in. we go to bed. the boy starts nudging me because i'm snoring. i get up to go sleep on the couch, mum and grandma are back from the uncle's place, and still up. she says, "so you stayed home alone and ate fried pork skins while we had pot roast". the smile on her face is sickening. i'm already fuming mad that i can't go back to sleep on the couch (it's occupied by my urine-stenchy grandmother) and now this?

lovely.

i get tired of waiting for them to go to bed and retire upstairs to yet another filthy bedroom. my mother calls upstairs SECONDS later - all of a sudden they're going to bed and i can have the couch if i want it. my grandmother is beside herself with anguish as she asks me, "why didn't you TELL me you needed the couch??"

"because it's YOUR HOUSE."

i'm seriously considering the boyfriend's suggestion that next year i spend a few days with my mum in Mexico or Palm Fucking Springs. i'm not spending another day in that filthy, decrepit house of hatred. i don't have to and i'm not going to. i spent some time there this year out of a sense of duty to my mother, but i'm not playing this game anymore. without my dad there to buffer, commiserate, deflect, and play occasional jester, i'm finding the mood in that place dark and depressing and intolerable.

no one went out of their way to make me feel unwelcome when i was 5. no one went out of their way to make me feel unwelcome AFTER whining incessantly when i told them i couldn't make it that year. after i relented and adjusted my commitments so i could go.

yeah i guess you could say the magic wore off.

so long, and thanks for all the fish.