I wrote a letter to a pal about how I fucked up my favorite holiday. This is an excerpt.
Thanksgiving is (was?) my favorite. I love(d) cooking and having guests over. This year I stupidly train wrecked myself. I had the WHOLE fucking family over and it was way more than I could handle. In addition to my husband and two kids, I also had my mom, eldest daughter and her beau, two sisters with their partners, (one sister has a daughter already), one brother with *his* partner and both his kids and since both sisters and my kid have lived here, a brass fuckle-tin of their buddies showed. Normally, I’d be over-fucking-joyed.
I couldn’t leave the fucking bedroom for more than 5 minute increments and I felt like an utter failure. I was SERIOUSLY thinking about suicide but I didn’t want anyone to hear me call the hotlines and the thing that always keeps me from doing it is knowing it will be one of my kids who finds me. Despite being dead, I can’t live with that.
Oh, and one of my best friends - an alcoholic - came by so drunk she fell off the sofa and lay there, staring at everyone with her cheek half buried in the cushions. My stunned brother asked if she was ok and with all the Blackness she was able to muster with a couch in her mouth, she snapped, "DO I LOOK OKAY? HELL, NO! IN GENERAL AND SPECIFICALLY, I AM NOT OKAY!" Because of how much she means to me, I just stood there laughing at her while everyone else scrambled to her aid. I was pleased to earn "The Look" she’d been giving me since jr. high.
I’m still in shock no one knows I’m an addict. I guess being as sick as I am with everything else helps mask it but even the doctors haven’t asked. I can’t tell if I’m an amazing actor or my entire medical team is quacking.
As for blogging…at this point, it’s the only fucking thing keeping me sane. And part, or a more elaborate version, perhaps, of this letter may end up in the blog unless you object.
This is when it starts to get hard, by the way. I’ve developed an almost debilitating agoraphobia. I loathe grocery shopping and holiday shopping is even worse, attempting to guess what hunks of useless shit people really don’t want and buy it with money I don’t fucking have with my zero income, decorating this shitbox I live in* then packing, wrapping, opening the presents followed by cleaning up; next, 4 days later, everyone ignores my birthday, but fuck it, one day closer to death…and New Year’s so I can remember all my dead drunk friends and finally the ghastly silence filled by the hopeful letdown of a barren January. And I’m actually an optimistic realist!
Yuk. I’m going to go hibernate. Wake me up on Groundhog Day.
*My house is filled with mold, the landlord treats it like shit so it looks like a hovel, it's poorly angled so it never gets any sunlight and it's way too small for all my pointless crap anyway so....
Thanksgiving is (was?) my favorite. I love(d) cooking and having guests over. This year I stupidly train wrecked myself. I had the WHOLE fucking family over and it was way more than I could handle. In addition to my husband and two kids, I also had my mom, eldest daughter and her beau, two sisters with their partners, (one sister has a daughter already), one brother with *his* partner and both his kids and since both sisters and my kid have lived here, a brass fuckle-tin of their buddies showed. Normally, I’d be over-fucking-joyed.
I couldn’t leave the fucking bedroom for more than 5 minute increments and I felt like an utter failure. I was SERIOUSLY thinking about suicide but I didn’t want anyone to hear me call the hotlines and the thing that always keeps me from doing it is knowing it will be one of my kids who finds me. Despite being dead, I can’t live with that.
Oh, and one of my best friends - an alcoholic - came by so drunk she fell off the sofa and lay there, staring at everyone with her cheek half buried in the cushions. My stunned brother asked if she was ok and with all the Blackness she was able to muster with a couch in her mouth, she snapped, "DO I LOOK OKAY? HELL, NO! IN GENERAL AND SPECIFICALLY, I AM NOT OKAY!" Because of how much she means to me, I just stood there laughing at her while everyone else scrambled to her aid. I was pleased to earn "The Look" she’d been giving me since jr. high.
I’m still in shock no one knows I’m an addict. I guess being as sick as I am with everything else helps mask it but even the doctors haven’t asked. I can’t tell if I’m an amazing actor or my entire medical team is quacking.
As for blogging…at this point, it’s the only fucking thing keeping me sane. And part, or a more elaborate version, perhaps, of this letter may end up in the blog unless you object.
This is when it starts to get hard, by the way. I’ve developed an almost debilitating agoraphobia. I loathe grocery shopping and holiday shopping is even worse, attempting to guess what hunks of useless shit people really don’t want and buy it with money I don’t fucking have with my zero income, decorating this shitbox I live in* then packing, wrapping, opening the presents followed by cleaning up; next, 4 days later, everyone ignores my birthday, but fuck it, one day closer to death…and New Year’s so I can remember all my dead drunk friends and finally the ghastly silence filled by the hopeful letdown of a barren January. And I’m actually an optimistic realist!
Yuk. I’m going to go hibernate. Wake me up on Groundhog Day.
*My house is filled with mold, the landlord treats it like shit so it looks like a hovel, it's poorly angled so it never gets any sunlight and it's way too small for all my pointless crap anyway so....