Over the hills and though the woods.

Next week is Thanksgiving and I am already getting the all-back-together-again jitters. The eldest of our family, who is a cruel alcoholic, will come, and he is bringing our uncle, the uncle with Alzheimer’s. That means that we will all feel really bad that Mom’s baby brother can’t remember who he is, and because of that, we will think of Mom and how much we miss her and how long she has been gone and what the last year of her life was like and then it will get around to the babies, my younger sister and me.

Or they will talk about how far I have come, you know, me being a crippled and all, how I fought my way out of that wheel chair and how they thought I would never walk again and how close I came to being put in a nursing home at age 37. That will force me to have to remember those eight awful years that I was in a wheel chair and had no control over anything in my life.

By the time we sit down to eat, my brother will be looped drunk and will see if he can make any of my sisters cry. He doesn’t do that to me because he knows that I am crazy and will tell him to fuck off. They, on the other hand, will just take his verbal abuse until he hurts them so badly that they one at a time will eventually leave the table crying. It’s a sick game he has played since he was a kid, that being mean to my older sisters. They are nearer his age than my younger sister and I.

I will have to defend a million times why I am in school and what I am studying and why I don’t want to just sit at home and draw disability. I will have to code switch and be like them, and I hate that being like them, talking close to them and knowing that I have more to say and wish I could say it but can’t because then I would be Ms smarty pants who got a degree and is in graduate school. It sucks coming from poor white trash.

They will discuss religion and politics, and I will bite my tongue until it bleeds because I know they don’t know the bible or politics, and it hurts me to hear the men say the world is in mess because of the woman leaving the home, the woman getting those abortions, the women taking charge of their families, and I look around and think who in their right minds would let a bunch of deranged relatives of mine control anything? They will invariably discuss homosexuality and lesbians, and I look at all my cousins and nephews and nieces and wonder how in the world our family is so heterosexual, and then I see some of their eyes and feel their secrets and know they are not what they seem and wish that our family were more accepting and they could live their real life, the life that was meant for them to live.

My children will be there and while I love my children, my daughter is not really doing well these days and if she makes one little mistake; says one thing that will open the door, the sisters, that is what we call my older sisters, will give her a lecture on how she has let them down. At that point, I will have to wink at her and let her know that I understand her pain, I, too, have been there. She will go outside to smoke and then get high with one of her good cousins who maintains a good life even though they are drug users.

Finally it will be over and I will take my empty dishes, my grandsons, and my nervous stomach home. I will ruminate the events of the day and think why didn’t I say this or that. I will be thankful that it is over for another year and I will vow that next year I am not going to put myself through that mess again, but I know that next year I will be in the same fucked up place. Thank the gods for xanax of which I will take many on my trip down the mountain. Then I will not want to kill or wound to many of my pigheaded family.