Yesterday my supervisor told me that I didn’t have to come into work on Thanksgiving this year, and continued to tell me her plans with her family members. I then became very aware of the approaching holidays.
I have already finished the birthday gifts and Christmas gift shopping but, I didn’t really settle into the idea of being around family. And, of course, I immediately felt dread due to the recent events here in the USA and that I was the minority of not only the country but my own lineage. I could go on about everything that makes me different, and everything they either don’t know about, or rejected but I’m too tired to do that anymore.
October was a very bad month for a lot of people in my life.
Everything feels like this is the last chance to enjoy things. That I should spend time with family members even though every time I do I feel hurt and alone. Because this might be the last time I get to do so.
But then again I’m so tired, sore, and confused that I want to put myself first. I want to put my husband first. After the news we both looked at each other and just knew we were the only true family we had. And we didn’t have to be traditional because, well, we aren’t the traditional sense of “family” anymore. Maybe we never were to begin with.
I asked my supervisor if I could be scheduled for Thanksgiving. She was surprised but accepted without question.
My mother told me that Thanksgiving was going to be at my Aunt’s this year, and that my Aunt had “already started her bullshit she does every year”. I told my mother that my husband and I are most likely weren’t even coming this year (I left out that we probably weren’t going to attend the next years to come), she shook her head in disappointment and was even a bit angry. But I had to work. What could she do about it.
After that conversation, I didn’t really feel relieved from expectations of tradition being lifted. Instead I felt the loom of possibility, what my husband and I will do instead. “We could go out for our own dinner..” he suggested,
“Hell, we could go out of town completely.”
So maybe if you’re also dreading Thanksgiving, consider not going.
If you only go to family outings to see that one special family member who also is fed up with the rest of the bunch, invite them with you and bail out together.
Life is too short to hate a whole month(s) every year.
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