"Christmas Means Family" Is a Full-of-Shit Statement

Clark Griswold is still my spirit animal.

Now that November's over and December is officially here, we're officially in the process of shifting gears at my house. That means the Christmas lights are lit on a nightly basis, and we've officially started our yearly watchings of some of our favorite holiday films. Last night's pick was one of my personal favorites -- National Lampoons Christmas Vacation. 

The older I get, the more I think I relate to Clark (Chevy Chase) on a level I never did when I first fell in love with this film. I keep holidays very low-key these days for all sorts of reasons, but I'm usually the person in my household that does most of the planning for holiday celebrations. I put together the menus and do all the cooking. Back when my living situation allowed for it more, I used to get pretty into decorating my apartment and trying to make it feel like a magical place to be for the holidays. Sometimes I'd go overboard or fail to plan ahead well enough and wind up shooting myself straight in the foot, just like Clark, but it's probably not too hard to understand why.

Growing up, I was a very idealistic child, and my home life failed to measure up in many ways. My parents stopped loving each other at some point when I was a little kid but made the "honorable" decision to "stay together for the kids" anyway. I don't know who they thought they were fooling, though, because it was pretty apparent that neither of them was about that family life. My dad openly dated other women and was home as little as possible, even around the holidays. My mom more or less just gave up on domestic life -- hated to cook, hated doing the mom thing, and hated keeping house. Each of my parents bad-mouthed the other to my brother and me non-stop, so that was fun.

On Independence and Self-Discovery

"Are you happy, or are you pretending to be happy?"

We watched this movie a few days ago -- Swallow. It's about a young, pregnant housewife named Hunter (Haley Bennett) who's struggling with certain feelings. This is a life she once thought she wanted, and that would make her happy, but -- as can often be the case -- the reality isn't quite measuring up to expectations. Her husband doesn't take her at all seriously and barely sees her as a person. Hunter especially doesn't seem all that thrilled to be pregnant. It's clear she feels like the walls are closing in on her and that something's got to give soon.

One day, Hunter gives in to an odd, sudden urge she has to swallow a marble. For reasons she can't quite understand, the act makes her feel empowered, possibly for the first time in her life. She eventually swallows other objects, some of them quite dangerous. Before she knows it, she has a full-fledged habit on her hands, her husband and in-laws find out, and strife ensues. From there, the film becomes about Hunter's struggle to feel like an important player in her own life and chronicles her attempts to get there. The film was really very good and gives you lots to think about.

Much about Hunter's situation reminds me of how it felt to be married to my first husband, Greg. I was very young at the time -- much younger than Greg -- and I didn't have the luxury of being a housewife (although that is something I thought I wanted.) I definitely didn't develop the urge to swallow marbles and thumbtacks. However, Hunter's feelings of inadequacy were very familiar to me. Like Hunter, I was surrounded by people who considered my feelings and needs to be unimportant compared to everyone else's. I disagreed. 

Many Departures

I never feel like I have that much going on in my life until I actually sit down to blog when it's been a while. It really makes me realize the extent to which time flies. My cat died not long after my last post. She was on the older side and hadn't been doing that well for a while, so it wasn't completely unexpected. It managed to be wholly devastating anyway though. 

I'm not the sort of person that supports wallowing in emotions like grief or disappointment -- or at least not to the point where it starts to feel like it's doing you more harm than good -- but I can't lie. This has been really hard for me. I've had many pets over the years, but Ched was just special. She's pretty much the only living being I've ever known that I can honestly say never seemed to feel anything toward me but love. It's done me so much good to know that any living thing could really embrace me unconditionally like that because it's certainly more than I can say for even the best humans in my life.

And as tough as it can be to feel sad for the loss of both big and little souls that touch lives, I've realized there's a positive side to grief. It's your proof that you experienced someone and something worth missing. I've literally had whole-ass family members and so-called good friends exit this planet without eliciting so much as a tear from me, let alone full-force grief, but looking back on those relationships, I'm not surprised. They were never there for me. They never laughed with me or cried with me. They never actually acted like they loved me or cared about being part of my life. And to be honest, the feeling was mutual. 

I know a lot of animals are unconditionally loving and loyal -- one reason I've always preferred them to people -- but Ched was that to an unusual degree. She did nothing but love me, even when I got frustrated, irritated, or downright angry with her. I worry that I wasn't always as nice to her as she deserved, but I'm sure she had to have known how loved she was regardless. I tried to show her as much as I could and to the extent that I know how. 

Demons, and Thoughts, and Demons, and Thoughts

I do not, and likely never will understand people. In particular, I don't understand how two-faced they can be. How they can tell you they feel one way about you to your face and then cut you up behind your back when they talk about you in private to others. I used to feel like this was simply a running theme in my own life for reasons I didn't understand -- attracting unusually disloyal people who talk shit about people whenever it suits them, but now I'm beginning to wonder if maybe this is just a problem with everyone, every person.

And if it is -- that this kind of disloyalty is just human nature -- how seriously should I take it? How much do people mean the things they say about someone they care about when they're busy complaining about them and shitting on them to others? Are they just venting their frustrations to avoid taking it out on the person, or should it be taken as evidence that they don't actually care after all?

To me, that has always been such a serious thing, as well as one of the first signs I felt I had that someone in my life is probably not there for the right reasons and that I should reconsider their continued presence in my life. In many cases, it was the end of my trust in that person, not to mention the beginning of the end of my love for them. I tend to feel like that sort of thing -- how you're discussed when people think you can't hear or won't find out -- is a window into how others truly feel about you, and that you would do well to pay attention to what you learn.

I rarely like what I learn about others when I become privy to such information. I rarely catch them sticking up for me, defending me, or telling others how grateful they are for all I do for them the way they claim to do. It always turns out to be them complaining about me, bitching about the way I am, whining about how much they feel they have to put up with because of me.

On Growing Up and Its Consequences

So I cut ties with a couple of friends this week. Sadly, it seems that the more of my own issues I resolve and the more growing up I do, the more I start to see some of my so-called friends for the losers, eternal victims, and rotting garbage people that they are. As far as how I feel about that? On the one hand, I'm really pleased to realize I've grown enough as a person to finally assess such situations accurately. But for someone that really hasn't had many close friendships to begin with, growing up can also be a really lonely process. I definitely feel like I lose friends these days at a much faster rate than I make new ones.

This time, the people in question were a middle-aged male friend I'd known online for years and his female partner of about a year whom I was only just getting to know. (We can call them David and Terri for the sake of this post.) David is of the age where people that haven't really taken very good care of themselves over the course of their lives start having serious health scares and something to that exact tune finally happened to him maybe a month or two ago. He's also been struggling with some pretty serious depression and anxiety lately, some of it probably related to the health scare and some of it not.

Now David has always been a little bit stunted as a person. Like many people I've known online, he sees and presents himself as one thing when actually he's another. (No real judgment on that front. We've all been there, including me. Hell, especially me.) Like many people in that boat though, he claims to tell it like it is and to be all about brutal honesty, but only when he's the one dishing it out. When someone else is serving it up -- even if it's someone he claims to respect -- he handles it with all the grace and dignity of a toddler. That's not actually the reason I cut ties with him though. That happened because I decided I could no longer tolerate the way he treats people, particularly his partners. 

People Are Allowed

This rolled through my Facebook feed earlier. I posted it to my own page as well, but for some reason I never feel like people want to hear more than a couple of sentences as far as why I posted something these days. That's when I start to miss the days when blogging was the go-to way of communicating with others online. Not that I truly mind, of course. Keeping a blog mostly for myself (and the few people interested in reading something longer from me) is therapeutic in its own way.

The fact of the matter is if there is one lesson it's taken me most of my 40 years to really learn, it's the one covered by this graphic. My entire life people have tried to make me feel like I'm some horrible wreck of a person just for ending past relationships and friendships or for putting distance between myself and family members I consider to be toxic. Not because I was abusive or cruel while we were still part of each other's lives -- just for calling it quits and walking away.

Those people failed to understand that I didn't make those decisions in a vacuum. I don't go from wanting to know someone to not wanting to know them overnight or without cause. Those people don't apparently remember me trying to tell them when something was hurtful right before they dismissed my feelings by ordering me not to feel that way or telling me I was too sensitive and "needed to work on that". They don't remember the times I shared an interest, a dream, or a fear with them only to have them mock it and make me regret even trying. They don't remember the constant stream of suggestions, demands, comparisons, and little criticisms they lobbed my way over the years either -- all the little things that never let me forget I wasn't good enough.

Writing Lab: On Wasted Energy

Prompt: "What does the phrase 'a waste of energy' mean to you?"

To me, a waste of energy is usually an activity or pursuit that consumes time, brainpower, and other intangible personal resources, but doesn't really have a point or yield useful results. I'm thinking of tasks like mindless busy work you might be given at a place of employment or things your parents gave you to do when you were a kid just to keep you out of their hair. They're wastes because that same energy could just as well be spent on something that feels worthwhile because it's actually fun, useful, or productive.

Sometimes I think of other scenarios as wastes of energy on a larger scale though. Examples from my life would include some of my past relationships. I used to have a bad habit of getting into relationships with people I wasn't all that into just so I wouldn't have to be single. In some of those cases, I stayed with the person for years despite being 100% aware that I didn't see any sort of a future with them. Even casual relationships consume a lot of energy though, so I look back on situations like that as having been absolute wastes. I could have been spending that energy on bettering my own life or on people that were better suited to me. I also think back on some of my old jobs.

When you combine all of those situations and look at them as a collective, they add up to entire years of my life flushed straight down the toilet because they yielded absolutely nothing of use. That time and energy is something I'll never get back. I wonder all the time how my life might be different or more stable if I'd actually spent those years on worthwhile people and pursuits instead. Not every life experience has to be earth-shattering or life-changing, but it would be nice if I could at least look back on some of those situations as having been fun for what they were at the time.

On Relationships and Reflection

I feel like I've been conversing with a lot of friends about the topic of relationships lately. I've been in my own relationship for nearly 11 years at this point, so I tend to forget how tough things can be when you're still in the process of looking for your person. In particular, I forget how bad a relationship with the wrong person can make you start to feel about yourself.

I have an acquaintance I follow via what's left of my LiveJournal friends list and the situation she's in reminds me so much of how things were with Shawn. Shawn was probably one of the first men I felt really, truly passionately about in my life. He also turned out to be one of the most horrible, abusive human beings I've met to date. When I'm honest with myself, I have to admit that after my relationship with him, I wasn't ever the same open, giving, trusting person I used to be again, even after many years. That's probably for the best considering how many selfish individuals I tend to attract into my life, but still. It's hard not to regret the loss of a part of you that was innocent, and generous, and trusting.

Lots of people can make you feel self-conscious about your hobbies, your goals, or your personal habits. Shawn somehow made me feel self-conscious about who I was on a core level. He hated that I was introverted and thought quality was more important than quantity when it came to friends. He hated that I read and liked to learn. He hated that I wasn't more driven and success-oriented. He hated that I was still trying to figure out what I believed spiritually and socially even though I was only 21 or 22 at the time. He really hated that I was a sensitive person that felt things deeply. Being steeped in that environment for even one of my most impressionable years of my life changed me forever.

Writing Lab: On Relationships and Technology

Prompt: "How has technology enhanced or detracted from your relationships?"

I've never been a member of the camp that thinks technology is nothing but negative when it comes to human relationships. All technology does is give people more options. What is done with those options depends entirely on the person. Some people do use it to tune out and disengage from the world around them. However, there are plenty of others that take advantage of the opportunity to be more connected, as opposed to less. I consider myself to be the latter.

I've always been a loner, as well as extremely introverted. While I have always enjoyed having at least a few close personal relationships with other people, I have never enjoyed what has to happen in order to obtain those relationships. I hate being in the physical presence of people I don't know and I loathe making small talk, attending social events, and pretty much everything else that people used to have to do if they wanted to make friends or find people to date.