Thanksgiving! And, as you read this, I\u2019m sitting in an overheated house in Parkersburg, WV wondering how early is too early to have a vodka tonic.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I\u2019m tired, to be honest, of my family.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t many left \u2013 my grandfather, a man of bad ideas and snap decisions.\u00a0 My aunt, who has been reduced to a depressive pill-popper.\u00a0 Two cousins \u2013 one a useless, violent creature and the other estranged.\u00a0 An uncle, who has stood as the most functional family member, but only thanks to defensive walls that could hold back the Wehrmacht.<\/p>\n
I was tired of my family after mom killed herself.\u00a0 Maybe even before that.\u00a0 I\u2019ve spent a lifetime, since childhood, tuning out my family.\u00a0 Avoiding them.\u00a0 Ignoring as much as I can.\u00a0 To become involved is to embrace madness, and also requires the complete surrender of common sense and intellect.\u00a0 In one way or another, everyone in my family is committing suicide.\u00a0 They either drive themselves into a tree at 100mph, or they eat themselves to death, or drown in pills and wine, or put themselves in the poor house through lunatic spending sprees.\u00a0 If it makes sense to say so, nobody in my family seems truly happy unless they\u2019re utterly depressed.\u00a0 Where possible, they will undo every good thing.\u00a0 The prime example, of course, being my father.\u00a0 A man absent even before he took the family fortune and vanished without a trace for 15 years.\u00a0 The man who destroyed a multi-million dollar empire.<\/p>\n
Thanksgiving.\u00a0 Christmas.\u00a0 The two holidays I dread each year.\u00a0 It all comes into focus for me during these times where we\u2019re supposed to gather and be a family that, in the end, we have never been a family.\u00a0 We\u2019ve been a collection of similar gene types trapped in an endless cycle of self-abuse, fear, and self-hatred.\u00a0 There are no hugs, nobody ever says they love you.\u00a0 If they do, it\u2019s only in the most extreme cases and, even then, a seemingly difficult admission.\u00a0 All talk reverts to the litany of family horrors \u2013 the deaths, the suicides, the thefts, the corruption, the betrayals, the addictions, the estrangements, the lost, and the vanished.<\/p>\n
The curtains are always drawn when visiting the family.\u00a0 Two days indoors, and so sealed in that environment that it\u2019s always a surprise to step outside, when the visiting is over and it\u2019s time for the long ride home, to be confronted with the weather and clean air.<\/p>\n
I tend to fall into a bit of a seasonal depression around the holidays.\u00a0 It\u2019s been slightly better this year.\u00a0 Finally, I have something to live for.\u00a0 A sense of hope.\u00a0 An idea that things can be better.\u00a0 My own, long healing process has been all about being able to say that, yes, it can be and should be better.<\/p>\n
As far as getting to that better point, I\u2019m not particularly worried.\u00a0 I\u2019ve survived disabling chronic pain, a family that has done nothing but try to derail me at every turn, and the treacherous waters of evil acquaintances.\u00a0 People who have stolen from me, lied to me, and taken advantage of my naivet\u00e9 all under the guise of friendship, and love.\u00a0 In my weak years, I surrounded myself with weak people.\u00a0 So, given that I have some mysterious inner strength, I am confident that I can move on.\u00a0 That I can change things.<\/p>\n
The resentments I harbor need not go past these pages, anymore.\u00a0 Certainly they can\u2019t be brought to the family table and, overall, they no longer belong in my life.\u00a0 What was lost is lost, and the lesson has not been ignored: Strength comes from within.\u00a0 Change can only be made by my own hands.<\/p>\n
Realizations and awakenings are all fine and good, but don\u2019t really change where I am now as you read this. Thanksgiving in Podunk, West Virginia.\u00a0 My anxiety dream, last Tuesday night, thinking of the next day\u2019s long rainy trip from DC through the mountains and down into the Ohio Valley, took me back to a painful moment.\u00a0 When my father left, I had just turned 12 years old.\u00a0 An only child with no real friends, a latchkey life.\u00a0 My friends took the form of Legos, where I built huge towns and spacescapes and medieval lands, living out my dreams of escapism.\u00a0 For comfort, I had stuffed animals.\u00a0 The only things in my life I could hug.<\/p>\n
Dad took everything, and we went from being millionaires to surviving on food stamps over the course of three weeks.\u00a0 Back then, you could cash in the food stamps for cigarettes and beer.\u00a0 Mom had me buy a stick of gum with $100 in food stamps several times a week, funneling the money to her smokes, her booze, and drugs.\u00a0 I escaped with Legoland, she escaped with far worse things.\u00a0 My grandparents bought the groceries.<\/p>\n
The family mansion on the hill went up for auction and, for a few weeks, we fled to my grandparent\u2019s house while my grandfather mortgaged and borrowed and stole enough money to keep the mansion afloat and reinstall us into a weird, shadow version of the life we once had.<\/p>\n
During those brief weeks of exile and confusion, my stuffed animals were confiscated.\u00a0 I was far too old for such things, and a boy, as well!\u00a0 Only girls had stuffed animals.\u00a0 Nothing terrible happened to them.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t burnt or destroyed theatrically.\u00a0 Instead, I was forced to bring them to the damp basement bedroom where they were stuffed into two big, black garbage bags.<\/p>\n
Their importance to me did fade with adolescence.\u00a0 By the time I graduated high school, their location was unknown.\u00a0 Somewhere in the vast undersea clutter of my grandparent\u2019s basement, where their own lives had also piled up.\u00a0 Three generations of American junk, all of it worthless when the end came.\u00a0 Cheap toys and jars of baby teeth, broken lamps and ugly dinnerware, clothes that fell apart when you touched them and journals mildewed shut.\u00a0 An endless assortment of forgotten memories.<\/p>\n
But, though no doubt long lost and unrecognizable at the bottom of a landfill, I sometimes pine for those stuffed animals of my youth.\u00a0 And I think of that day my grandfather stuffed them into the garbage bags.\u00a0 I stood there imagining that they were all suffocating.\u00a0 Clawing at the sides of the bags and gasping for breath.\u00a0 Reaching out for me, or just panicked and crying out my name.\u00a0 Dying slowly, knowing that they were being abandoned forever.<\/p>\n
That first night, going to bed without anything to hug, was the start of my new life.\u00a0 My life without the comfort of being a millionaire and being free from want.\u00a0 The first night where I really understood what had happened \u2013 dad was gone.\u00a0 He\u2019d taken everything.\u00a0 And mom was a ruined woman, imploding into her own insane world.\u00a0 Nothing would be easy ever again.<\/p>\n
But listen to me.\u00a0 Poor little rich boy, eh?<\/p>\n
I wonder if money does buy love.\u00a0 If it was good to, at one time, be a fortunate son.\u00a0 I wonder if I really lost anything or if all of it was just some sad, pathetic dream.\u00a0 And, now, in my own world, on my own terms, by hook or by crook, I wonder if I am finally entering the waking moments of my life.\u00a0 Free of the hospital bed and emerging into the sun.<\/p>\n
Or something.\u00a0 I don\u2019t fucking know.\u00a0 I just want a vodka tonic and some pumpkin pie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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