So yesterday was Christmas; I’ve been in upstate New York for a week and this year is every bit as hard as last year in terms of dealing with the parents’ divorce (they just signed papers last week) only worse because my sister isn’t here. My mom kept talking to me about her frustrations with Dad and his family (his brother and sister joined us for Christmas last year and this year too) and finally I had to ask her to stop. Look Mom, I’m really happy for you that you left this marriage; you were suffering a lot and Dad wasn’t getting it, refused to take you seriously. So, I’m glad you are flying solo, getting excited about online dating, trying new haircuts, backing off the family responsibilities you’ve always bent over backward to try to hold together. And yet: the man you are walking away from is my father. I can’t walk away from him, wouldn’t ever walk away from him, despite my very complicated relationship with him. So hearing you talk so casually and insistently about putting distance between you and his family… aches. And it makes me brittle and tense, like I’m betraying half of myself to listen to it. I miss my sister, because she gets it.
The husband of one of my graduate school friends died suddenly, less than a week before Christmas. It’s continuing to make my head spin and my stomach churn. I just saw him. Less than a week before he died.
I’m a freak in my family. Breakfast Christmas morning centered around my dad, uncle and brother all trying to complain to me about the various ways queers make them uncomfortable, assuming, I guess, that I’m not one of them. Or that I should be wary of being one of them. Seeking my agreement, “yes, butch women are too masculine, I know, it’s weird, they’re just internalizing masculine tropes blah blah, right, lesbians who are femme [don't you see me? oh, I forgot, I cover myself up for you] are just insecure and they really just are trying to provoke men, and yes, effeminate men are overly dramatic, ‘too much,’ aren’t they annoying?” Instead I get defensive, feeling attacked and wanting to run away to my beloved queers of all persuasions and demonstrations. Not a one of you is too much, not for me, I don’t care how much the world sneers, you. are my family.
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal passed, and while I am pro de-militarization, I think it is so important for anti-war and anti-militarism queers to recognize how important the military is as a way to make a livable life, for queers and others. I am glad that queers in the military are now legally protected. I am okay living with perhaps a contradiction that I wish the military didn’t exist and that I’m still rejoicing the repeal of DADT.
My insurance company, already too expensive and only covering 70% of medical services, denied a whole series of claims from this fall for necessary treatments. From one day to the next I am suddenly over $7,000 in medical debt. Pre-existing condition. I do not understand how people can seriously oppose the health insurance reform this year.
I went to church on Christmas Eve for Midnight Mass (Episcopal version), as always. It’s the one service of the year I still like to go to. I’m not remotely religious, nor do I support the church in general. But I did grow up attending, and sang in the choir, and the Midnight Mass has become deeply embedded in my Christmas memories. It was this year the one place I didn’t have to feel tense, sad, uncomfortable, or responsible about or for anything related to my parents’ divorce. I found out that the reverend of the church has some kind of cancer, which unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. Though I no longer consider the church important to me and hardly think of it these days, that man is kind and caring and the absolute embodiment of what a good church leader ought to be in my opinion. He has (despite, I understand, some disapprobation from the congregation) adamantly supported Gene Robinson (the gay Episcopal bishop in NH) and parted way with my diocese because of it. He has been an important person to my mother and has watched me grow up. When he stops presiding there, I will stop going back altogether.
So this year Christmas has somehow seemed like a year of various losses. I feel melancholy now; ML is off with her family, my sister is on the other side of the Atlantic, I’m struggling to keep my dad a part of the family somehow, and I’m trying, not for the first time of course, to wrap my head around illness, death.
And yet. I have a home in San Francisco. I have friends, I have a girlfriend who is also my very best friend in so many ways. I can’t wait to go back to school in January; I have a community that is challenging and supporting and able to hold all of me however I show up. I have this space, here when I need it (and I want it more and more), always supportive. So, I’m okay.
I hope all are well. <3
I find that Christmas always seems to make a lot of the “not so lovely” parts of my life stand out even more than the rest of the year. I am 100% sure that it has to do with how the media forces a happy, perfect, merry little family down my throat when telling me to go to *insert store here* to purchase my holiday gifts for them, when the MY truth tells me that my Mom is not the perfect little lady decking the halls boughs of holly, she is instead in a bad relationship and worries way too much about not making him upset. My father isn’t the perfectly portrayed man bringing in the Christmas tree but instead the short man stumbleing because he is so freaking wasted like every other day of my life that I could remember. My sibling are not thos beautiful, bright eyed, innocent chilkdren awaiting Santa, they instead are a grown man and woman who are childish and somewhat irresponsible with their lives and are having children themselves and I am not their perfect littl angel, instead I am the one who obviously has something wrong with them because I am gay, I am not married, I do not have children, I choose school over the life they think I should have, and what ever I do to help them all out is never enough because I am not a “normal” girl. I feel like I am the only sane person in this beautiful mess of a family. My sister told me last night that I was the glue that held the family together because when ever things get really ugly I am the one the steps in and cleans the mess and takes control to fix the situation. My Christmas wish is to not be the one expected to carry this heavy “glue”…
But, even with all the fights, all the resentment, all the love I still feel for these individuals that I do not understand I survive another year and I can be happy with that…AND the fact that as guilty as I feel for wanting to leave this HOME to finish school and start MY own life I will not be here too much longer…so one more year almost done and another one closer to San Francisco…I am ok with that.
I hope you managed a few smiles and a few of those warm, fuzzy feelings with your family.
Just to say that I love your blog since I found it in early fall and I am happy whenever there is a new post.
I like Christmas and have lowered my expectations so that, overall, I feel they are met. I like the slowing pace, I like the lights and candles and the music. The rest I ignore.
I wish you all the best for the new year!
/Maria, Sweden
who also spent a year in upstate NY as an exchange student ages and ages ago (in Amsterdam on the Mohawk river)
wow, it’s been rough. I’m sorry. As always, the phrase comes to mind that there are reasons for the seasons of our lives and being able to walk through them with our internal selves still intact is so important. I wish you peace and balance and lots of rest (and a quick getaway back to your home and love and all that is comfortable).
Sorry about your melancholy Christmas. Mine was disjointed with everyone around us was in so much pain. Maybe that comes with getting older.
I was smiling though – according to my sitemeter, you are spending xmas about 17 miles from me.
I’m really sorry about your friend’s husband dying suddenly, it’s something that you just can’t wrap your head around.
Here’s to coming home to your happy life and all the wonderful memories yet to be made.
All my best to you.
Hi Alpha..sorry to hear all that sad news. Things can only go up for you from here. Start 2011 fresh and I’m sure good things will come to you. If I wasn’t in the middle of a blizzard I would drive up to NY why to meet you and give you a BIG hug!!!
Hopefully can have a happy New Year.
*Big HUG* Kara XOXOXOXOXOXOXO
Oh E, I’m so very sorry to hear all of this. I feel like I’ve been very much out of the loop, and this is what I come back to :\ I wish it was a better holiday for you. I wish you and ML could spend it together – afterall, you are making your own family now – and find way to combine your new family with your existing ones. It won’t always be like this though – and I suppose getting through times like this will make you stronger, more experienced (even though you didin’t ask for it). I hope we get to catch up soon. Much love to you, my friend.
I personally can’t wait for you to be back to San Francisco…. I’ll take you out for a cocktail! I’m sorry to know that the holidays have been so unbelievably rough.
Wishing you the best in 2010 :)
Aw, tough times… :-(
Here’s some animal pictures, a.k.a. universal pick-me-ups, to help bring in the new year. :-}
http://fuckyeahbabyanimals.com/post/344565489/baby-duck-meet-mr-owl-via
http://conkers.tumblr.com/post/2085545341
My parents split up almost eight years ago, after 27 years of marriage.
My mother handled it a lot like yours is.
Yeah, that’s rough.
Actually, I was just nodding along for most of your post about family Christmas. All I can add is this: you’re not the only one.
Thanks for all your responses :) It’s good to be here.
@Esmerelda: You’re so right; if I didn’t internalize the image of the happy overflowing-with-love-and-peace Christmas, I probably wouldn’t be so let down. Note to self: work on that.
@Maria: Thank you :) And the lights and candles and music are far and away my favorite part about Christmas too. Also, Christmas movies haha. Next year: more of that, less of everything else! Also, Amsterdam is not too far from my home base!
@Ashley: Thank you! Just a few more days now…
@8thday: I just read about your Christmas. My heart goes out to you and yours. What tough times. But it put a smile on my face that you’re only 17 miles away from me :)
@greg: It’s affected me this holiday more than I would’ve thought, given that I wasn’t even terribly close with him — much moreso with her. But it’s put me in tears almost every night. I don’t know what it is about night. It was the same thing when one of my dear friends died right before Christmas my senior year of college.
@Kara: I would love for you to drive up and give me a hug!! That would be awesome :) Blizzard schmizzard ;) And, yes, I can’t WAIT for 2011. 2010 has overstayed its welcome!
@Jen: I wish ML and I could figure out a way to spend Christmas together too, especially because we both love the holiday. She’s very attached to her family, though, and I feel guilty even *thinking* about just spending the holiday with *her* family and ditching mine. We’re going to have to come up with some kind of way to share. I wish we could just forgo the family thing altogether and hole up ourselves, watch a movie Christmas Eve, furtively fill each other’s stockings, and wake up slowly Christmas morning with tea and hot chocolate, breakfast buns and Christmas carols, and go for a long walk in San Francisco all bundled up… THAT sounds like my idea of a perfect Christmas.
@queer girl: I can’t wait to be BACK!! And, cocktail. YES FUCKING PLEASE.
@C: OMG ANIMALS. SOOOOO CUUUUUTE. They did indeed put a smile on my face, especially the first one!!! I love love love cats doing funny things. :) :)
@Jolie: So I take it it’s gotten better since 8 years ago? Sigh. I guess time will do the trick. Glad I’m not the only one anyway. Well, I mean, I’m not glad, I wish everyone had awesome beautiful times with their awesome and functional families… but, um, no. That’s totally not realistic.
I’ve definitely been that kind of homesick before. Holidays can be tough for all the usual reasons, but it sounds like this year has just been kind of brutal on you. I’ve experienced all kind of holidays: happy, sad, single, coupled, etc. And it seems like there is always this fragmented feeling of getting pulled in so many different directions. I guess what I’ve learned from that is sometimes that home that I long for is just the space of my own soul that seems to get lost in the shuffle of everything else going on. It’s always nice to get back on your own turf and feel it come back to life. I hope you’re feeling more peace now that you’re back in SF.
Also – I always get excited to see new posts from you, too. You’re one of my favorite writers.