Split Holidays Suck

I don't much get into the personal parts of my life on le blog. I mean, you all know that I have a close, personal relationship with my television and iPod, but that's about it. Lamenting poor-little-rich-girl tragedies just seems sort of stupid, and who wants to read that anyway? But, sometimes you need a little room to vent. And I think that when it's 8:30am and you're sitting in front of your Christmas tree with your head in your hands as tears well up, it's time for some of that catharsis stuff. So if you don't want to read a probably depressing diary entry, stop now.

So, my parents are divorced. Just about a week and three years ago, my dad up and left my mom. That's right -- Merry Christmas, I got you a broken home this year! So it's still a fairly recent development in my life (22 years of a unified family, 3 years of not), and it weighs most heavily around holidays, particularly this one. Now, I do think my parents' divorce was ultimately a good thing -- their marriage had essentially been over for quite some time, and in fact, the last few holidays we did spend together were a bit miserable. But, nonetheless, the actual act of them breaking up sent me to a real bad place. I spent a year in a very, very deep depression. By the time I was able to walk amongst the living, I did anything I could think of that was bad for me. Year two was much better, with dark spots along the way, but generally full of on-the-mendiness. This past year I've been damn near back to fine, rarely if ever thinking about it, reclaiming my sunny disposition, comfortable with the new lives we're all leading, slightly ok with the continual egg-shell-walking involved whenever mentioning one of them around the other, even comfortable spending time with my parents' sig-o's.

But ugh. Christmas. It's such a damn cliche', but holy shit this is hard. I've been feeling myself slip into a bad place over the past couple weeks or so, sort of unconsciously. Getting mad at or being not nice to people for no good reason, getting really really drunk and really really emotional, and overall feeling pretty gloomy. Ho ho ho, right? It didn't occur to me until this morning that it all had to do with what time of year it was and what that all meant to my psyche. My dad called to chat and said something along the lines of, "so I only get to see you Christmas Eve? That's all?" Enter head in hands, in front of fully decked tree, tears-a-plenty tailspin. Cause you see, it's not the revamped traditions that bother me (anymore). I can handle the driving across the entire map of Northern Virginia to celebrate in all of my mandatory locals. What I can't handle is the GUILT that both of my parents make me feel for something that they themselves imposed on me. Neither does it intentionally, and whenever I tell them to cut it out, they immediately appologize and say that wasn't what they meant to do. But that feeling of letting people down just kills me. Don't they know that if I could spend an entire holiday in one place that I'd be happy as a clam? Don't they know that I want to spend time with both my parents and not feel like a traitor in some way? Not feel like their birthday cakes are competing with one another?

There's no real solution. All things considered, I know I'm lucky to have two parents who love and dote on me and want to spend as much time with me as possible. But I just hate the fact that something that should be jolly and cheery and full of love and happiness gets so bogged down with territorial crap. And that it'll never change and never go away, and probably, when I'm all married and childed and have an entire other family of players involved, get even worse.

So, uh, yeah. Sorry for the buzz kill. I guess the purpose of this was to get it all out, and appologize to anyone I've been/will be terse with, done something stupid or mean to, inexplicably burst into tears in front of, etc. It is most definitely not you. It's me. And if you've got a hot tip on some Christmas cheer, hook a sister up.