12:50 a.m. - 2003-12-26
Not so much with the merry
'Twas the night after Christmas, and all through the house, every person was grouchy, including the mouse.
This was not the happiest of Christmases chez SJ. The strain of moving coupled with how incredibly bitchy my sister gets when she hasn't been sleeping combined with the fact that it's pretty obvious I would rather have been somewhere else with someone else, and things were a little more strained than usual. It sucked, quite frankly. My sister stormed off at the end of Christmas dinner in tears, and then when I got home just now from Jamie's house where I went to escape from the fucking bullshit that was this house and decided to eat a single toffee, she said in the most condescending voice possible "didn't you just have dessert at Jamie's house?" I told her to fuck off and immediately gave up on having a civilised conversation with her and my mother, and so now I'm sitting in the study pissed off again, and I'm angry at my family for ruining my favourite day, and I'm angry that Jamie had to keep rescuing me, and I'm upset that he isn't here to rescue me now, and I just want him to always be here with me and I hate having to try to explain that to my family.
Because as far as I can tell, they don't understand. None of them have ever been torn between two families like this. My sister has never had a serious boyfriend (possibly due to her extreme high-maintenanceness). My parents met in England when my mother was on a summer exchange, and they never lived on the same side of the fucking WORLD as both sets of their parents. They never had to play the "who shall we spend the holidays with this year?" game because that decision was automatically made by the relative location of oceans between various sets of parents and them.
So I get bitched at for trying to balance the two, told that I like Jamie's family better than my own, get into fights, get frustrated, and leave rather than fight more about it. And the thing is, the more we try to cling to how Christmas is "supposed" to be, the more I don't want that kind of Christmas any more. The Christmas I want is the one where I don't have to leave Jamie six times in the day. Where I get to spend my down time talking with him and playing my new games with him and watching my new movies with him instead of sitting in strained silence watching a movie with my family or fighting about the fact that the dishes aren't done.
I'm stuck in the middle, in Christmas limbo, where I don't quite get to pick one place and stick with it, wanting only one thing, one person, and getting burned by trying to find a way to balance too many other things.
I think that, perhaps, in the future, I will remember that at the end of the day, I don't care where I eat dinner or who I watch a movie with so long as I spend it with Jamie by my side. And I think that next year, the tough decisions are going to start getting made, because after three and a half years, I will no longer be willing to make myself miserable for the benefit of others. Especially when those others decide to tell me I've ruined Christmas by wanting to be with the person I love more than anything in the universe.
I hate that this is what I'm writing on Christmas day. I hate that this is what I'm FEELING on Christmas day. But I can't shake the feeling that despite how hyper I get about presents, despite how much I love carols and turkey and stuffing and candy canes, despite the fact that I got awesome presents again this year, all I really want for Christmas is Jamie. And that's all I want for every Christmas forever more. So I think I need to stop getting worked up by all the rest of the shit and just focus on that.
Despite the fact that I have my fucking sister in the background reminding me that my parents are cynical about my relationship with Jamie because my mother broke it off with a guy she thought she'd marry, so of course there's no way in hell Jamie and I are going to last because gosh, we're just young and stupid. So I give her a hearty "fuck you" and I will concentrate on the fact that in 9 hours, I leave for a whirlwind trip to the mountains with a man I adore, where there will be no cruel sisters ruining my Christmas, no overly stressed out parents ignoring me, and no ache of longing to be in Jamie's arms.
Because that is where I will be. And that's the best present I could possibly get.
