What Thanksgiving means to a non-believer

The month of November comes, my daughter’s birthday comes, my shoulders tighten and the panic attacks begin, then it comes; the never ending flow of what everyone and their monkeys uncle is grateful for.  This is the moment I start living on the edge of my seat waiting for the chips to start falling; because the chips fall every year...and they always have.  I can't think of a thanksgiving where chips haven't fallen.  The last several years I have been heavily medicated so I don't have a series of constant panic attacks.  Despite my pleading, I seem to always have to throw myself into the lion’s den, only to cower in a corner shaking until someone lets me out.

I grew up and am a part of a large family...this means that Thanksgiving equals drama; the kind that comes back and jabs you over and over again when you are least expecting it.  You get led down a road towards the belief that we are family and we love each other and we can spend a day together without blood-shed...and then it happens; drama, anger, and the memory of an elephant of every wrong that family perceives to have been committed to family.  This is a yearly cycle that never ever ends.  Then the next year you have to relive the last years drama until someone unbuttons their pants and farts...then there is a whole new set of drama to hear about because someone didn't eat someone else's whatever the hell it is.  You stuff yourself to where you are throwing up so you aren't the one accused of not eating the unidentifiable substance spoken of earlier.  It's the endless tirades of how one person prepares their turkey and why it is better than the way whoever prepared the turkey you are forcing down your gullet.  It's the "I think they should have made red Jello, not green.".  And finally who left early and the endless speculation of if they were offended or if they offended the hosts.

Ohmyfreakingosh!  Where in there is the "I'm thankful, and this is a day of thanks"?  There is no "thanksgiving", only fault finding and looking for reasons to be angry one with another.  This comes after the twenty some odd days of "today I am grateful for milk", and I'm sorry it seems hypocritical to me.  It seems to me that you should be grateful for something all the year-long, not just one month out of the year.

I am not pointing fingers, I am not making accusations, and I am not trying to offend; though I already know that there are many who will take this as some kind of direct insult on everything they believe.  I assure you that the only person I am thinking of right now is ME; I know that I am being selfish, but I also know that I am the only person that cares about how I feel about Thanksgiving.  No one else does, because I end up in that lion’s den, heavily medicated, every stinking year.  You see, how dare I opt out...I would be the endless reason for gossip and drama for 5 years.  So here I am in my revolving rung of hell with my Valium.

Needless to say I don't believe in Thanksgiving and I don't celebrate it.  People can be shocked and appalled, but I don't really care.  To me the day of Thanksgiving means my husband will get triple time and that means that we will have Christmas.  My prayer every year is that he will get an 8 hour shift that day, and then I can watch Christmas movies to my heart’s content!  I understand that there are many who profess this to be their favorite holiday, and good for you.  Like Christmas and Easter, not everyone believes the same way you do and it is impolite to force your beliefs on another person.  This is not to say that I am ungrateful, I just choose to be grateful for everything I have all year long, not just in one month.  My thankful list is ongoing all year and I read it when life seems to dump on me...perspective is everything.

I am not grateful for thanksgiving, I am grateful despite thanksgiving...and I'm good with that.

I'm Losing...

This past month has taught me one thing:  I’m losing.  I’m losing people, I’m losing desire, and I’m losing the war.  What war you may ask; the war against Satan…the war I fight every day that my feet hit the floor in the morning.  I will admit that there are days that my feet don’t really hit the floor until the afternoon, but they do eventually.  I continue the fight and I won’t be deterred from my path, though I may hit a wall on occasion.

One Saturday morning I was eating a pancake for breakfast and lost a crown…given that I didn’t notice until later I’m making the assumption that I swallowed it.  No biggie I thought, as the dentist wanted to replace that crown anyway because he had glued the other one back on 3 times already.  I get to the dentist Monday morning to discover that I have a screw in my mouth…the dill-hole that did the root canal 8 years ago put a post in the tooth…never to be used, but there all the same.  The post had broken the roots of my tooth and so away I went to an oral surgeon to “dig it out”.  Three days later he did precisely that, and apologized the whole way through.  15 pieces and 3 stitches later I had a gaping hole and a pain in my head that still hasn’t gone away.  So I’m losing bits of myself.

A week or so later I went to my therapist for the last time because some dill-hole decided that he didn’t need to come to Hemet anymore…he has to work in Colton and nowhere else.  He discovered that the root of many of my problems is that I was tortured by a dentist when I was 9 years old…and we don’t get to try and solve this issue, because I’m losing my therapist.

Then my Angie texted me to say they have been given a chance at an apartment in Idaho earlier than anticipated and were going to take it and be gone before the end of November.  I had anticipated their moving at the end of the year because she had been accepted into a Master’s program at Boise State…but now she is going in a matter of weeks.  I am losing my Angie.

I have already lost my joy that I found at the beginning of this year, and I have been beat down so badly that I have lost my desire to have it back.  I feel stuck in this dark, hellish box…there is one small window to see what I used to have and occasionally the light of my children and family stream through, but otherwise it is dark and lonely.  My husband and I have a friend, more than a friend…he is the Godfather to our children.  I used to text him whenever I would get lonely or feel wretched, and now he is unable to text or call, and I miss him.  I refuse to lose this person, and I will fight to the death to keep him in our lives. 

I feel as though I am losing more and more each day, and November has come again, and I want to crawl into my bed and not come out until December is here.  But despite all this loss I still have several things worth fighting the war for…my son’s endless cuddles are at the top of that list.  The fact that my husband still loves me and thinks I’m attractive is another one…and watching my little star grow and learn reminds me of the way we should all live.