Holidays Are For Other People

My mother called me the day after Thanksgiving and bitched me out. Once again, another year of holidays is passing and I have pulled away from all family members and all family gatherings; I don't call them on Thanksgiving. I never have and I probably never will.

I don't know why. I told my mother once that I despised Thanksgiving. She laughed and told me that that was the day my father left us when I was two years old. But I hardly feel that that is the true reason.

I hate the month of November as it reminds me of all the unplayed events of the summer: the death to all my springtime goals and dreams and comes as a reminder of another year spent doing nothing. I hate the food. Turkey that clings to your throat: dry and obnoxious. Stuffing, which is nothing more than wet breadcrumbs, slammed into the anus of a dead bird. The mashed potatoes are good, but then, I can eat those whenever I want to. I even hate the Thanksgiving colors: browns and yellows, oranges and tans. They remind me of vomit or the colors of M&Ms of my youth before they introduced blue, red, and green.

So my mother called me in tears. She asked me if I cared about other people and if I realized how much people are worrying about me. This made no sense to me. Thanksgiving never made much sense to me. Families don't get along so feigning love and thankfulness once a year , to me, is hypocritical. Maybe it's because I am an only child or from a broken family but I know that I am not alone on the boat and fellow children of infidelity-trashed families don't feel the same.

But then I broke down to my mom. I told her things that I haven't told her before. About not being happy anymore. About not being able to sit back and enjoy something anymore. About how it feels that a part of me is dead, died years ago, and took every piece of humanity with it. How, at the most successful and most accomplishment-filled era of my life, I feel like a total failure.

About how I used to pull the blankets above my head when I was 10 before falling asleep and praying to God that I would die in my sleep of suffocation. And how disappointed I would be to wake up the following morning.

And then we hung up after a quick reconciliation. I guess I won any sort of argument that we may have been having because she quickly succumbed to my sudden loss of control. And now that she knows that her son is a classic Prozac case: another drug-laced, hazy-eyed, wrist-scarred zombie. She calls me once a day to check on me. Sometimes, I have the heart to answer it.

Holidays were made for phone calls, visits to the grandparents' house, perfectly cooked turkeys, laughing children, football, story-telling, significant other introducing, pumpkin pies, affection, love, family, the kids in the basement playing video games, butter soaking in a perfectly baked roll. Holidays were made for movies, television shows, stiuation comedies, stories, folktales, history books, 3rd grade art projects. Holidays were made for other people.