I really hate this time of year. My emotions are all over the place, and I have little control of which direction they will go. It was so much easier and more fun when I was a kid. I remember Dec 1 I would start to get excited and the closer to Christmas it got the more excited i got. Sleeping Christmas eve was so hard. I could not wait to see what Santa would bring me. My baby brother and I had a deal which ever one of us woke up first Christmas morning would wake the other. We had only 2 bedrooms for the 7 of us, so I slept with my mom and my brother slept with my dad in one room. My older sisters slept in another bed in the other room, and my other brother had a cot in their room. It was not easy trick to sneak past our parents as the beds were against the wall and the parents slept on the outside. To get up without waking our parents we had to craw out over the foot of the bed then quietly slip over to the other bed and try to wake the other one without waking either parent. We usually did it with a tiny tug on the blanket and a whisper of the others name. At that point we would be joined by our sibling who also climbed out over the foot of the bed. We would then slip down the stairs to see what Santa had left. It was never much as we did not have much money. Usually a doll for me and a truck for my brother, and if it was a really good year sometimes we also got a game, but any other presents were clothes and things we needed whether we wanted them or not.
The funny part was on those rare mornings we were not awake by 6 am. If we were not awake by 6 am on Christmas or Easter morning we would hear our dad say Janie , Roy Santa Clause has been here. At that point we would hear our mom yell at our dad "FRANCIS! LET THEM SLEEP!", but it was too late soon as dad called out names we were up and on our way down the steps. My dad would just laugh when mom yelled at him. Times were I thought he enjoyed it more then we did. A short time later our older sisters and brother would follow us down the steps. Christmas morning was always a joy back them with my whole family around us in the house. It did not matter how cold it was outside in the living-room with my family around me it seemed warm.
When I was little I used to pick the ornaments off the tree so Mom took to putting the breakable ones up too high for me to reach. The tree never went up till Christmas eve back then it made it all the more special. Most of our decorations were home made ones. I had no way of knowing at that time when mom would yell at dad to let us sleep it was because she had not been in bed long. Those were happy days. We did not have much but we had love.
When I was 10 all that changed. I should have been the best Christmas I ever had. I got the one thing I wanted for Christmas that year , but I never thought I would really get. I wanted a sewing machine. My oldest sister was seeing a friend of our dads and he got me a sewing machine that year. I was setting there trying to get it to work when the call came in. Our mom's dad had died that very morning. There is nothing that will take the happy off a great present faster then being told you just lost your grandpa. I am the type to over think things and that has bothered me for decades. My big brother had gotten married the year before, and my next to oldest sister had just gotten married that very Christmas eve, and we could not find her. She had lived with our grandparents for a time before she married, and was on her honeymoon so they told no one what they were going. We feared we may have to bury him before we found my sister, but lucky she showed up at our aunts house the next day and she did not know my sister did not know . She offered her sympathy to my sister for her loss. My sister immediately called mom, and they cut their honeymoon short.
In 1982 my dad died just one week before Thanksgiving, and I was still depressed by Christmas. Then about a decade later I lost the first man I ever really loved 3 days before Christmas. He was not mine anymore we had broken up about a year before, but his death was still a shock to me. Then about 6 years ago I lost a very good friend to a condition that could have been treated the first week in Dec.
Now this year someone I once loved very much turned her back on me and pout me on ignore so there is no way to fix the relationship. We used to spend hrs on mic and on line window shopping. I miss those times. She has not spoken to me sense not long after my last birthday. What makes it hard is all the things she sent me that brought such joy when she sent them to me. There is no room in my house where there is not something she sent me, and when I went to my shed to get some Christmas decorations I saw the Christmas tree she got for me the first year I knew her. It was a beautiful thing she did for me that year and so unexpected. Best presents are those you do not expect. I thought she was a very good friend, and it still hurts me she will not talk to me because I was being myself. Parts of me wants her to forgive me and part of me is so angry she will not forgive me being who i am not who she wants me to be.
So you see my emotions run from joy to sadness and tears, and I have no way to control it .
jane_and.the_dragon
joined:
Worry about your character, not your reputation. Your character is who you are, your reputation is who people think you are.
ht
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