This is a blog post I wrote out about 5 or 6 years ago. I never did publish it. I was looking through my saved drafts and decided to go ahead and publish it now. My Thanksgivings aren’t like this anymore. I have changed the way we do things at my house and I don’t allow toxic relationships to continue. I no longer put the pressure on myself to have the perfect dinner. We do our best, we spend our day together as a family, and we enjoy our togetherness. I feel strongly about the plight of the Native Americans, so I have never really thought “Thanksgiving” was a great thing to celebrate in the first place.
Yesterday morning I woke up with a migraine, nothing unusual about that though; I was having my normal ocular migraine the night before. I had to get up though because it was Thanksgiving and I was thinking I should attempt to get the house cleaned up and food cooking or something. I was actually excited about hosting Thanksgiving. This year the baby is old enough to enjoy what was going on and I was just happy because this was our first Thanksgiving in the new house. Very quickly though, my excitement was extinguished. No real concrete reason. It was just gone.
Here is my self-dialogue, the things that go through my mind as I witness my hopes for a good dinner at my house celebrating with friends and family… -> I get it. I am stupid in the kitchen and thank you for pointing it out every time I do something you deem wrong. I don’t pronounce anything right (boy.. being an English teacher is going to be rough!). Unless someone else teachers her, my daughter will never learn how to be a good cook. I make everyone around me miserable. I couldn’t even get everyone to sit and eat! One by one they left. I left. Why stay? I had failed at this before it even started! I made at least two people so miserable they couldn’t be in the same room as me. Obviously, the things people tell me out of anger is the truth. Maybe it takes being angry with me for people to say what they really feel. Who am I to be mad about that? I honestly felt/feel, that is I were to remove myself from the equation, everyone around me would be considerably happier. Not “permanently” remove, I just mean that maybe I was kidding myself thinking that I am capable of any normal social interactions.
It isn’t about just yesterday. It’s been this way. I am like a beacon for entertainment for others. It is just SO easy to make fun of me and laugh at me. It is SO easy for other people to find amusement in my pain. They don’t even seem to care much, as long as they feel better in the end or they get a laugh out of it. I get it. It is me. There is something obviously so dysfunctional about me that it brings out that side of people.
I know the compassionate side of people (do people really have that side??) will read this and want to reply about how things aren’t that bad, or people don’t treat you that way or think that way, but this is all my self-dialogue, how I view myself, and I am fully aware that maybe it isn’t how everyone views me. I understand that.
The Journey 