Christmas Again?

Wednesday December 24th, 2008 - Milwaukee, WI/Lake Villa, IL

Christmas time is the dented can’s worst nightmare. This is the time all that went wrong backs up like a clogged toilet and settles in the crevices of the brain and festers until it has infected the rest of the healthy thoughts. Some years are better than others and this one is turning out to be a rough one. I feel an emptiness and loneliness I can’t put into words.

This is the time when the laughter of an audience can’t mask the pain. Many entertainer types need to hear that approval from an audience and I’m no different but it’s really just a temporary and less than adequate substitute for the love and approval of a good family.

Humans are wired that way. We need family interaction and support and approval from those who are close to us. If we don’t get it at home we’ll try to find it anywhere else that might have it or something close to it. For entertainers it’s that approval from the crowd.

There aren’t any crowds around today and that magnifies the fact there isn’t any family around either. That really hurts and I’ve been over it so many times I don’t even want to go there again in my head because it will hurt one more time but still not get any better.

All I’m asking for is a chance to reconnect with my siblings while we’re all still alive. I want to look them in the eye and give them a hug and just let some healing start so we’re all able to move on from a miserable childhood under the thumb of a dysfunctional ogre.

I don’t know if my mother is living or dead and at this point I don’t really care. I wish it were different but it’s not. Some closure to all of it would really take a lot of this pain and in my opinion needless angst away once and for all. I have tried every way I know how to get that to happen and they refuse to even acknowledge my existence. This is all insane.

I know I’m not the only one going through this kind of torture and I wish nobody had to including me. I went up to Milwaukee today to visit some people including the lady that’s been in and out of my life for so many years. She’s got her own set of holiday baggage.

She asked if I wanted to hang out today because she’s off of work and her son is over at her ex’s. She’s not very fond of Christmas either and I thought we could just hang out for a while and hopefully have some good food and relax a little. Being alone gets old too.

We went to Red Lobster and had a great meal and hung out for a while and it was a very positive experience. We had some laughs and some crab legs and it was a nice break from the usual Christmas ‘tradition’ but then she had to go visit her other kids and it was over.

I really enjoy her company and she looks absolutely great but I get mixed signals about where she wants to go with all this. She’s got her own situation to deal with and I respect that and we agreed that we’d just see where this goes and play it by ear. That seems fair.

What doesn’t seem fair is that some families get the concept of how it’s supposed to work and others don’t. It’s a huge pain in the soul at Christmas and I wish I could make it right.