Holidays are tough for me. Thanksgiving, specifically, is one of the worst. I grew up in an extremely cold, abusive and scary household, with the abuser being my sister. I am not at all a hateful person, but I can confidently say that hatred is the only feeling I have towards her. She is 9 years older than me and literally made my life absolute hell from the moment I was born. And my parents didn’t exactly prioritize my protection from her.
My house was always the hub for the holiday. Family came and gathered at our house every year for every holiday. There was a time when I loved it, but the older I got…the more I realized just how incredibly fucked up my entire life was. As I got older, my cousins started having their own kids. And seeing my cousins family…how much love there was, how much laughter and functionality and just…the love they all had…how they took care of their children…I hated it.
I was so jealous. Why couldn’t I have that? Like, is this how a family unit is supposed to function? In high school, it all got to be too much. My entire life was horrible. I was trapped in a house that was anything but safe. Every night it was questionable whether or not my sister would actually kill herself (or me…or my parents). She any and every mental health diagnosis in the books, and was suffering from an obvious and apparent (in your face like) eating disorder(s).
In my senior year of high school, I was beyond over it. We had just had our “Thanksgiving” dinner, and I was feeling everything bad. I needed attention, I needed love…I just needed someone. Everything hurt and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I called my (very sexually abusive) boyfriend that night and asked him to pick me up.
He did, shit happened, and long story short, I ended up getting pregnant. (No, not with my birth son. Different story there.)
So there I was, 17 and pregnant, my life was shit all around me, and nothing was in my control. I was a minor and had absolutely no say or no voice in my own life.
I fucking hate Thanksgiving. It was the trigger for the worst period of my life that never truly ended. That day, Thanksgiving 2011, was the day that colored and shaped the rest of my life.
I didn’t realize how much I still despise this day until I woke up this morning and started yelling at everyone around me and was short and agitated, for seemingly no reason.
It didn’t take me long to realize what day it was, and how much I hate it.
I’m not feeling particularly “thankful” right now. I hate this day and what it means for me. I hate that I still have so much pain and trauma in my life, and I feel like I’m never going to stop hurting so much.
This day is crap for me. And I’m sorry if I sound ungrateful…but I’m having a rough time. And the holidays do not help.
I’ll leave you with this, it’s a blog post from one of my favorite people. He’s got a few posts that I love and refer back to year after year, and this is one of them.
I understand your feelings, and it is important we appreciate that everyone has a different situation. Thanks for sharing!
Feel free to read some of my blogs 🙂
Thank you. 💙
Will do!