Why I Hate Christmas

Let me start by saying I may use some foul language in this blog.  If that offends you, DO NOT read it.  That's all.

There are many reasons why I love Christmas.  The fact that it is a time to celebrate our Savior's birth.  Being with my wife and kids.  The incredible dinner that I make every year.  The looks on our kids' faces when they open their gifts.  Lots of reasons I love Christmas.  With that being said, I really am starting to hate Christmas.  Our lives are so much different from yours.  I could explain everything to you and take a week to do so, but you still wouldn't understand our lives.  I will try to break it down for you in just a small paragraph.

We have nothing to do with my side of the family.  Or rather, they have nothing to do with us.  We are not welcome there, so we don't go.  It sucks and it is very painful for me, but it is now life.  Luckily, my children do not remember my parents.  I would hate for them to have to experience the pain that I go through on a daily basis as well.  The house in which we live, we are not liked much by my Father in Law. We stay because we have to.  We stay because if we didn't, then he and my sister in law who also live here would not make it on their own.

At Thanksgiving, I spent a ton of money for dinner.  So much that I almost didn't have enough money to get gas for the upcoming week.  The food was devoured and that was it.  Nothing was said, no conversations were had, no one said what they were thankful for.  A week or so after Christmas, Amanda and I put up the tree in the living room.  This is the room where my father in law stays, sleeps and eats in.  The entire time we were down stairs, he pretended to be asleep.  He didn't talk to us, he didn't anything.

Now for today.  It was the same as the day we put up the tree.  We were all very loud.  We were laughing and having a great time.  Hayden got a Pocket Trumpet as one of his gifts.  He began to play it.  My father in law never moved.  He just pretended to sleep.  After we cleaned up, Amanda and I went back upstairs and talked about how much we hate how the holidays are now.  The deeply sad feelings I had from his actions the past few weeks is a feeling I would not wish upon anyone.  We are strangers in the house in which we live.  We miss her Mom very much, especially this particular day.  She NEVER would have allowed behavior like this.  She never would have let a 70+ year old man act like a child.  She was the glue that held this family together, now we have fallen apart.  We feel very much alone.  We have talked about this before and today, more than ever, this rings true, all we have left in this world is the four of us.  Me, Amanda, Hayden and Cullen.  That is it.  Lots of people say they are here for us.  Lots of people tell us that they love us, and we do believe that to be true.  But we are not a part of their family.  We will only ever have the four of us at Thanksgiving and Christmas from here on out.

My side of the family is a HUGE family!  There were 4 of us kids and either 9 or 10 grand kids.  We always had a good time out there at Christmas time.  But now, my family can go fuck themselves!  They are just as responsible for why I hate Christmas as the other side is.  In fact, my parents started my hatred of Christmas.  They are the ones who essentially told us to go away and never return.  Well fuck them!  Fuck them all.  I don't know how those pricks can sleep at night with what they did to us.  I really, truly fucking hate Christmas.  This is resentment that has been building for years.  It just so happens that today sent my hatred of this dumb fucking holiday over the top to PURE hatred.  Fuck Christmas and if you have a hand in my hatred of Christmas, FUCK YOU TOO!  If you know my parents or any of my family or are friends with them here on Facebook, tell them that Joe says "Fuck you for making such a blessed holiday such a piece of fucking shit!"

What it is to me

So a little over a week ago, I had a bit of a health scare and was hospitalized for a weekend.  The day that I was to be released from the hospital, I met with a dietitian about how I could change my health, permanently, for the better.  One of the things that she suggested was support from my wife.  I told her no, I didn't want that because I don't feel like my wife supports me with dieting.  I feel like she beats me down (even though I know she doesn't, but that's how it feels to me) whenever she is trying to be "supportive" or tell me that I shouldn't be eating this or that I have eaten too much of that.  I know that this isn't how Amanda is.  I know it.  But regardless, it is how I feel whenever she says anything to me about food.  The dietitian told me that I should think about how support feels to me.  So I have.  At great length.  Since the moment those words came out of her mouth, I have thought about it.  I have come up with absolutely nothing.

The truth is, I don't know what support feels like to me.  I have had so little support when I was young that I don't know what it means to feel supported now.  I do know this, the things that Amanda has been doing up until this point is NOT supportive.  It makes me feel like a worthless human being and my response to her current "support" is to just go and gorge myself with food just to spite her.  I know she is only trying to help when she says "You didn't eat very well today.", but to me, all I hear is "You are worthless.  You have screwed up so badly.  I hate you."  That is what I hear and it makes me hate me even more than I already do.  It makes me want to just eat until my heart or stomach explode.

So I sit here.  I sit here wondering what support feels like.  I try wracking my brain to come up with something that my parents did when I was younger that made me feel supported.  The only thing I can ever come up with is hearing the words "Good job" a few times.  That's it.  And that is certainly not what I'm hearing now.  I promise you, I am trying very hard to figure out what "support" is to me.  But at the same time, I can assure you that the way things have been handled in the past isn't it at all.  It will just make things worse.  I didn't write this so that anyone can try to help me figure it out.  I just had to write this down.  While talking with my dietitian earlier today, one of the things I said to her was "I got myself in this mess (health wise), I'll get myself out."  I meant that too.  Rome wasn't built in a day and I didn't get to be this fat mess of a slob overnight.  It will take me some time to get it back right.  In the meantime, I don't know what support feels/looks like to me.  Just know that I am trying.