Locate Sand, Insert Head - or - Christmas was Stressful.

***Just a quick note — I’ll be back to flippancy and fuckery next week. This one’s a little more morose than you’re probably expecting.***

Here we are! We made it! We ate too much, we drank too much, and we somehow miraculously refrained from telling Great Aunt Constance where she could stick her thoughts about how ‘Hitler had some good ideas, you know’.

Last week I told you about my one and only Christmas tradition. There used to be a bit more to my holidays in general, but as I’ve gotten older they’ve become considerably less holiday-y. At this point I thought I’d be a bit more put out by that fact, but honestly, it’s really turned out to be something of a relief.

By the time I was seven or so, we (my parents and me, only child that I am) dispensed with Christmas decorations pretty much all together. We would designate a houseplant to serve as a present repository and that was sort of that. My mother, a music teacher, would have her annual holiday student recital. We would go to the carol singing party. We would go to my maternal grandparents’ for Christmas Eve and to the home of whichever of my paternal relatives was hosting on Christmas Day. It was all very comfortable, even if my peers thought we were weird for having a ‘Christmas Houseplant’. Things morphed a bit over the years. Eventually, my maternal grandparents were included in the Christmas Day festivities with the paternal side, too, though we still did Christmas Eve most years as well.

Things changed significantly somewhere around 2006, however. My father’s two sisters (he's the oldest of five) had a major falling out, and that was the start of the power washing of the veneer. I was on my first year abroad in England when everything exploded, which meant that I left the country with a cohesive family and came back to a war zone.

The short version is that it’s only gotten worse. Everyone hates everyone, very few people are on speaking terms, and you never know who or when, and I’ve just gotten stuck in the middle of it all. For a while, I tried to ‘take the high road’, to be equally involved with everyone because none of this was my fault, but then, somehow, someone decided that some of it was my fault, and at this point I’ve given up caring.

So, no big family Christmas is definitely one in the blessings column these days.

Eleven years and minus three out of four grandparents after the original incident, Christmas this year was just me, Mom, and Dad, in a house on the Northern California coast. No aunts, no uncles, no one-remaining-grandmother. For all intents and purposes, it could have been any long weekend at any time of the year. Well, apart from the fact that I forced them to sit through How the Grinch Stole Christmas (always Karloff, never Carrey!), The Muppet Christmas Carol, and Desk Set. (It’s a Christmas movie. If you all can claim Die Hard, then I can claim Desk Set!) But that was about as festive as it got.

Now, I know this is going to sound ungrateful because there are so many people who are alone or lonely this time of year, but I’d much rather have just stayed home. I have an interesting relationship with my parents — almost as interesting as the relationship they have with each other. The word ‘tolerate’ is the best descriptor. We tolerate each other. Sometimes barely. You can imagine how much moral fortitude is required to tolerate each other for four days with a minimum of external stimulation.

If I’m honest, I’m getting tired of tolerating. It’s exhausting.

“So why don’t you talk to your parents? To the rest of your family? Tell them how you feel?”

Simple. We’re not that kind of family. I’d have thought that was obvious, considering the massive clusterfuck that is presently my father’s side thereof.

No, at this point, we’re just going through the motions because it’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re supposed to be joyful and thankful and hopeful and bursting at the seams with love and good cheer - so what do you do when you can’t muster up any of those things? You go along anyway and you put on your public face and you make the best of what you’ve got. You try to keep the conversation light, you try to keep your parents from chewing each other to pieces, and when you fail at those things, you just get out for a while — in my case this year, taking solitary walks on the beach and very long naps.

You do what you’re supposed to do, because you’re supposed to do it.

You put up with things as best you can, until you can get away.

And you feel thoroughly empty inside.