Christmas Past

tw: Toxic Behavior

December 24th, 2012

So that was a disaster. Christmas has always been a test for my family, but this year it really went to shit. I was supposed to stay the night at my parents place, but I ended up leaving early. I just couldn’t bear the bickering and hypocrisy. Let me try to gather my thoughts.

It started before I even arrived. My train was delayed and my parents were too busy to pick me up, so they had sent my sister on foot to help with my bags. I could practically hear their voices echoing through the town. ‘Shouldn’t have been late if you wanted a ride’. The house is a half-hour walk from the station, which doesn’t sound like a lot but through snow and carrying gifts for everyone it’s a slough. Plus I had a manuscript I had to finish up and send in, so I was already stressed about the delay.

Things seemed fine on arrival, bar a stream of sarcastic comments about being late. Mom was busy in the kitchen and my dad was setting up the Christmas tree and fixing the living room up. We watched TV and played some games, your usual Christmas stuff. When my brother arrived it started getting a bit tense. He had gotten some new job a state over and had just moved, so my parents were all over him asking about the transition and everything. Of course he had a lot to say, but after two hours of hearing about all the panels and door hinges he had fixed in his apartment, it was getting tiring. I tried to break the topic into something more interesting, but I was ‘politely’ shut down. Even my sister was sucking up to him. This is her first Christmas since she moved away from home, and she kept asking him for tips and tricks and DIY bullshit for her place.

During dinner it really kicked off though. My brother had apparently gotten bored of talking about himself and had shifted his focus to torturing me. He was giving me some shit about being late to everything or unreliable, so I pointed out that he had effectively ditched the family for some bullshit corporate position. That set the whole family off. I realize it was a hard blow, but I wasn’t gonna just sit there and take shit.

Both my parents went off on me telling me that of course he should follow a career and I shouldn’t attack my brother like that. Where was that when he called me unreliable. And my sister wasn’t much help, asking us to just drop it like it would go away on its own. We kept at it for a good hour before I realized I should cut my losses and just leave. If they were intent on not seeing my side of things, I wasn’t gonna force it on them.

So merry Christmas me, sitting alone and journaling.

December 24^th, 2013

Every artist has their pain. Mine is apparently my family. It’s weird, I see them throughout the year, and lunch with my parents or visiting my brother doesn’t blow up. Second year in a row now that I’ve had to leave on Christmas eve cause of some stupid argument where they all gang up on me. It was the same kind of bullshit this time. I get there earlier than both my siblings, help out with all the preparations, and they rock up late without any thanks or remorse. And of course my hot shot brother takes the center of attention again.

The dinner held its usual tension, my parents ignoring my brother’s snide comments towards me, and my sister trying to change the subject. My brother has this way of taking the high road and talking down to me in a backhanded holier-than-thou tone, as if he knows better in every situation, and as soon as I quip back at him he sets the blame on me as the aggressor.

We managed to make it all the way to lighting the Christmas tree before things got out of control this year. I was talking to my mom about the screenplay I’m working on, and she started doing this thing I hate, where she will indirectly compare me to my brother. It’s not like she does it on purpose or anything, but pointing it out to her she became irritated and insisted she wasn’t doing it. My brother sensed the opportune moment to swoop in and lecture me on being self-centered or some shit. Soon after my dad got involved and it didn’t take long for the situation to spin out, and accusations were being slung at me from every side.

I left for a walk to try and cool down, but somewhere along the way I realized I didn’t have energy to deal with navigating the tension the rest of the night, so I grabbed my bags and left.

So here I am again. They say Christmas is a time for reflection, and maybe I should be reevaluating how I spend my Christmases.

December 24^th, 2014

I’m starting to sense a pattern emerging. This year my brother decided to bring his fiancé home for Christmas. We’ve always had small, family only Christmases, so it felt like an odd thing to do. And given the past couple years where things have been tense enough, it feels like he was trying to agitate a response from me by forcing everyone to be on their best behavior just because she was there.

Of course, when we inevitably blew up in each other’s faces, it only made it much worse that she was, putting an aura of shame over the whole thing. My brother threaten to leave with his fiancé and my sister was in tears, and my parents were clearly judging me as the offender, so I spared my brother the trouble and left.

I can’t even remember what started the argument, some shit about respect or being decent. I was telling a story my brother didn’t like and he always has to launch into these lectures. I do remember what fueled it though, my brother coming in hard saying I only care about what I can get out of a situation. That’s a hard swing for a guy who hasn’t given me an ounce of respect in his life. I’ve always just been the younger, dumber one in his eyes who he could assert his power over. And my parents can only see me in his shadow. I have my writing, I have my art, but apparently having a business degree and a nice apartment is more important. And whenever I call out his bullshit to my parents, they can only ever see it from his side. Whatever. Ad astra per aspera.

December 24^th, 2015

Apparently I’m just a shithead who ruins everything in the eyes of my family. My brother and his wife decided to spend Christmas with her family this year. I thought maybe that’d calm down some of the usual tension, but almost the opposite happened.

As soon as I arrived it was clear that the others were still blaming me for the other years going south, and they put a weird energy into making sure I was at ease. I thought that kind of obnoxious, self-righteous manipulation was reserved for my brother, but apparently it runs in the family. I could stand it for about three hours before it became too much. I told them to knock it off, but that just pushed their behavior to condescending. Of course, when I started defending myself they inevitably brought the subject around to past Christmases blowing up, and I wasn’t in the mood to carry the blame for this Christmas on my back as well, so I gave the night an early ending.

It’s been like four years of Christmases gone wrong now. Everything else in my life is moving forward, but my family just can’t seem to change. They are my family, and I do love them, but it’s starting to feel like it’s more out of obligation that I put up with them. My parents gave me a good childhood and I can’t just cut them loose, but I don’t know if I can continue feeding into their problems. And my sister and I are quite close the rest of the year, but something about being around the whole family sets us all on edge.

December 24^th, 2016

You’d think we’d be able to keep it together for at least one year, especially when united around a common goal. Since it was my nephew’s first Christmas, and he was gonna be with us, we wanted it to be a good one. My mom called ahead of time and everything to make sure we were all on our best behavior. I don’t know if that helped anything or just heightened tensions from the beginning. Either way we ended up whisper fighting in the hallway for two hours. It was my sister who was the biggest aggressor for once, being super upset when the night didn’t turn out perfect.

My brother was keeping his usual facade full of snarky backhanded comments, and when I called him out on it my sister just exploded and dragged me to the hall. A lot of emotions came out that seemed to have been bottled up over the last couple years. Her version of the story was that I take everything as a personal attack, like she is totally deaf to what my brother is doing. I’m just serving him the same shit he gives me, but without being coy about it. And it’s the same with my parents, acting like they don’t hear his constant shots at me, even though they do the exact same thing in the exact same way.

Sis wouldn’t listen to reason though and kept putting in on me for ruining the night. In the end I left just cause she kept bringing things up from years ago, as if I couldn’t do the same with her. I’m not sure how this will play out over the next couple of days, feels like a lot of things were said without much thought. It honestly tears at me more than usual that she got involved like that.

December 24^th, 2017

I’m so fucking done. I had a hope that it might be different this year, since it was being hosted at my sister’s place and all, but it just fully exploded. My brother pulled me aside to give me some shit about what happened at Isaac’s first birthday, since we haven’t really talked since, and I got kind of annoyed and told him I wouldn’t have it tonight and went back to the others. He then brought it up later at the table like it was nothing, and I got really mad. My sister went off at me over this, and when I told her to mind her own business her boyfriend came swooping to her defense like a fucking knight in shining armor. He tried to physically evict me from the apartment like some gorilla pissing out his territory, and my brother barely came to my help, pulling him away and telling me I should leave.

Why can’t they see what they are doing? Have I missed something? I swear it’s always them against me. It’s so insane that they can’t see their cycle of abuse.

Whatever, they’ll be fucking sorry when I’ve left them in the dirt.

December 24^th, 2018

So my sister called me, on the fucking day of Christmas eve, to tell me I wasn’t welcome in her house this Christmas. I was almost on my way when she called, one foot out the door and she tells me in a monotone voice that I need to stay away, like some pre-rehearsed robot. The fucking nerve it takes to do that shit. And if she really didn’t want me there she could just have not invited me in the first place, or talked to me like an adult instead of this high school ass drama. It was probably her fucking boyfriend that set her up to it. She’s become so influenced by him, taking it out on me and cutting off her own family. On top of that my parents called me multiple times the last couple of days to grill me about not fighting and how my brother doesn’t want to have Christmas with us and is with his wife’s family instead.

I’m so done. I’m fucking shaking with anger. I swear, when your own family doesn’t even have your back it’s hopeless. But if they choose to act like that I have to choose to cut them off. Fuck that I owe them anything. They may have raised me but that’s it, other than that they haven’t given me anything but shit since I turned 18. For that I’ve more than paid my due in tears and frustration. No matter what I do they have some crazy overreaction and accuse me of all kinds of bullshit, and then act like I’m insane for getting mad at them. I swear they can stir an anger in me like nothing else. Fuck. I swear I’m done with them.

It’s later now. I don’t know what to do. I went for a long walk. It’s like ten in the evening or something. I have a couple missed calls from my mom after I sent an angry text. My head feels like it’s spinning and my face is tingling and puffed up. Oh god I think I might have fucked up. Did I miss something? Was it me all along? I feel lost. I feel like I don’t even know myself. Or my family.

Fuck...

Christmas Day, December 25^th, 2019

Hello old friend. I haven’t written here in a while. In fact not in a year and a day, since all that shit went down. It almost hurts looking back at my past entries. My psychologist says it might be an important lesson though, not only to learn from the past but to accept my flaws and mistakes as they are. I’ve been in therapy almost a year now. After last Christmas I broke down for a few days. I felt like I had gone outside my body and looked down on myself. My parents came by and found me lying on the floor in tears. I don’t remember it all that clearly, but I remember that first feeling of thinking I might have been at fault, and how deep it cut.

It has been a hard year. Lots of talking things out, and lots of apologies. Even when I knew that I was the cause of so much fighting and hurt in my family, it was hard to accept the full scale of it. Even now I can feel the urge to pin it on others. A small tingling in the back of my mind, trying to find some excuse for how I behaved. Looking back on my previous entries it’s clear as day, my pattern of starting fights and pouring the blame on everyone else.

We didn’t fight last night though. I sat and talked with my brother about all the kids tv he was watching with Isaac, and I talked with Dylan, my sister’s boyfriend, about music and jobs and stuff. We talked about this book I’ve been writing, and about my parents’ trip to Spain. I had kind of this underlying feeling of shame, Christmas bringing up memories from the previous years, but in a way I can kind of forgive myself for. I got tired pretty early though, partly because of the shame, and so I went to bed at around 9. Waking up this morning in my sister’s house made me want to cry of both joy and grief. It felt like the whole world had forgiven me a bit, and I felt stupid for wasting all those years figuring it out. I still have a lot to work through, but I can feel that I’m on the right path now, more than I’ve ever been able to. Ad astra per aspera.