Posted 12-20-2008 at 06:10 AM by Aerimyth
[COLOR="Teal"][SIZE="1"]Right now I just need to vent, get things put in front of me, and figure out what to do. So here goes...
There is one time a year that my family members can come together and at least [I]act[/I] like they get along with one another. This time of year is Christmas. I'm a member of one of those really big, really loud, extended families. We're such a large group that every holiday dinner is broken into three groups: My mother's dad's family, My mother's mom's family (Technically this is two groups in ad of itself, but we stopped seeing one side when I was really young because my dad thought keeping us away from homosexuals would keep us from becoming homosexuals... it failed.), and my dad's family.
Christmas eve, like the day before most family oriented holidays, is spent with my dad's family, however, one of my aunts died a couple of years ago, causing my grandmother to go into a slightly psychotic state of depression where she walked out on a fifty-year marriage, two of my cousins just got divorced due to infidelity on their parts (both ended up with children from the experience... yep, we're fertile), two more of my cousins are doing their own thing this year, and apparently they have moved dinner to Christmas day instead of the evening before. This would be fine but...
Christmas day, like all other holidays, has always been spent with my mother's mom's family. We're having to move up [I]DINNER[/I] to eleven so that I can be there for it because my plane leaves at four and I have to leave at two to get to the airport. I'll give more on this in a minute.
This year, we also have my mom's dad's new family to contend with. He was recently in the hospital and almost died. Visits to the hospital were the most consecutive times I have ever seen him in my life. He's threatened to disown/mark from his will any of us that don't show up for the holidays this year. Not really a fair move considering we are his only blood-related grandchildren and he was the one that moved hours away to be with various girlfriends and now his new wife after he and my grandmother divorced. He even stopped coming to visit after my uncle died.
So, back to that thing about the plane... I'm moving to Maine, roughly 1,200 miles from home, give or take a few, for college. Why? It's going to cost me half as much, even though I can't use my state scholarship up there. It's pretty cool that I can do that really, but one of my roommates is already making me angry before I've even moved in. Also, I can't seem to find my high school diploma and the ACT website doesn't recognize the school's code so I can't send them my scores. This will all have to be done by hand, along with finalizing my apartment agreement. This will only be made harder by the fact that it all has to be done and recorded before classes start on January 12th and my roommate (the one angering me) is trying to force me to spend my first week up there in her home town meeting her friends and family. This is time that would be way better spent unpacking, getting my registrations completed, and familiarizing myself with my new surroundings.
A separate bit of stress, though not entirely unrelated is that I've been in a relationship (admittedly an open-ended one) off an on for the past six years. Christmas day would have been a perfect eleven months; no break ups, no fights, seeing one another on a regular basis. However, the girl he dated before we got together got dumped by her latest girlfriend about a month ago and got bored and lonely, called him being all regretful and sad, and he started being unsure which of us he wanted... This happens about once a year, the same girl every time, so I simplified the equation. Just because he has done it before doesn't make it hurt any less, in fact, it actually hurts more. I had devoted myself to him so fully that I was allowing him to see and occasionally sleep with other people when he wanted, and even doing so myself on his insistence to make him feel less guilty.
The only good thing about the death of my devotion is that I am now free to pursue another that I have fallen for. The downside of this? This other lives more than 2,000 miles away, even after my move. This means that no matter how close we become, no matter how badly we may want to try being together, we have to settle for simply talking to one another. It hurts a little less to love someone when you can't be with them if you are friends than to love them and not be able to be with them when you have pledged your heart and body to them.
Add in to all this that one of my grandfathers has bladder cancer, the other has a fluid build up on his heart, and the great aunt that I have been living with for the past four or five years has only nearly died three times that I have been the only person there and able to get her to the hospital just in the nick of time. NOW she's on the verge of liver cancer, has too much ammonia in her blood, causing a risk of her ending up in a coma, and has lost more than 50% of her lung function. With me gone, the rest of the family will have to pick up the slack. I've been the only person to cook, clean house, do laundry, keep up with her medication lists, and keep an eye on her (ie: making snacks for her when her blood sugar suddenly bottoms out).
With all this comes the time of year factor. December is grey, muddy, rainy, and all around miserable where I live. January holds a lot of bad memories for me, in the two weeks before my birthday I had my closest aunt, my best friend, and another good friend of mine die, all in the same year. Two years before that a family friend who was like an aunt to me died of cancer in the same month.
I feel like I'm on the verge of another breakdown. It's a horrible feeling to be laughing, crying, rocking yourself, and being completely unable to remember why you are doing it.
I don't expect a lot of pity posts in response to this, that's not why I posted it. I needed to get everything off my chest, out of my head, and be able to look at it all written out before me so that I can try to sort it out and deal with it.
If you read this far, thanks for the concern, or morbid curiosity, which ever it may be.[/SIZE][/COLOR]
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