Christmas time in recent years has been traditionally the most difficult (and depressing) year for me. I think a vast majority of people around the world whether they are” normal” or “different” could attest to my thoughts.
I don’t think as one gets older and the views of the holiday changes, it’s the fact I’ve seen my own family fell apart thought my childhood into my teenage years and into my adult life. I believe part of this has to do with people being self-absorbed. I have a few family members who have ruined our relationships and just witnessing it has been painful. Thankfully I’ve closed that chapter over the last few Christmases.
My (maternal) aunt has been absent of my life since I was about 16, she’s a handful to deal with. She has been around my area on several occasions in the last year like it was no ones business, which in part that is a literal statement and a figurative one at the same time. The family had basically broken up with her several years ago, and she had gotten married and had a child and had told us after the fact. She doesn’t live around here, but in an area hundreds and hundreds of miles away from where I live. She’ll contact my grandmother on a occasion and talk to her like nothing happened. No guilt or any sense thereof. I could even understand her or forgive if she had any guilt thereof. To end that story, she’s a textbook definition of someone who is “fake” and is chronically a jerk. It boggles my mind how can someone be so careless, but act so caring in the most lamest fashion. I won’t bring up additional “drama” since it is to do with my family in an intimate way, and I don’t need (literally the) entire world* to know.
*I’ve gotten more international followers than I have domestic on this blog!
Another family member that has been part of my relationship from childhood was a cousin from one side of my family tree. She’s less than 5 years older than I am. She used to baby sit me. And she knew about my difficulties. (I was naive and thought my family didn’t know about my autism, I don’t know how much they knew at the time. I was that bad – at a young age of 18!)
She finished high school at the turn of the century and went to a university in Providence, and later was dating a boyfriend and later had a kid and gotten married. It really was she was with a boyfriend, gotten pregnant, moved back to the area, and then gotten married, etc., etc. etc. Unfortunately, things went very fast, and that timeline all happened within one year. Her later-to-be husband I wasn’t too fond of (and still I have difficulties with.) He is originally from the South, and I kinda don’t care for Southerners.
Meanwhile, my cousin has a severe case of undiagnosed ADHD, where she can’t sit still for one second (don’t try a New York Minute with her ether!) Her ADHD-like demeanor just really puts her into a fog and a tunnelvision.
Unlike the aunt I was discussing about earlier, this cousin is the suburban-girl stereotype I have been very critical on the blogs I’ve published in the last couple of years. In high school, she was very popular, was in athletic clubs, being HS president, the valedictorian and all that crap that one experiences in high school. She was well liked. So much, that she added up her social circles in college.
Many.
A lot.
So much, Facebook wouldn’t need to be referenced about her social life, because I see it outside of the browser window!
Supposedly her “friend” count on Facebook is near 1,000, but I see her large social circle when I have been to family gatherings, and family should be stricken out because often when we went to her kids birthdays it was like we were the third-wheel.
I’ve been over the drinking age for over 4 years now, and my phone hasn’t rang yet about going out for a beer together with my mother, her and her husband. Hasn’t happened yet. She’s been to more bridal showers (and now after marriage) baby showers from the college age and high school friends than she has been with her family. And speaking about drinking, she was one of those party girls, though now being thirty, she’s is supposedly slowing down, and the partying allegedly has slowed down too.
I was taught when I was in my late teens that most friends fade after various stages, and while you retain some friends in stages like high school or college, it was that some would continue, not like how my cousin has (again, Facebook or “friends” on Fb has nothing or little to do with this story, because the story explains itself in the real world!)
I’ve haven’t seen her in a long time, last time was around Christmas. She used to be a manager of a major borderline-yuppie national bakery chain in my area before moving closer to home of opening a new shop about a year ago.
I might be bitter because there is some natural jealousy to her lavish lifestyle in her twenties, something I never had to begin with, because I was taught to grow up right after my 18th birthday (as perverted as it is.) And I haven’t used Facebook for a few years actively, and seeing this overrated lifestyle in the real world has hurt me even more. And this is my cousin – a cousin I was very close with as a kid! Someone who should had been aware of ones dysfunctions and using as a perspective in life! Yes I have changed since a preteen, but you get my point!
It hurts around this time of year, when such holiday is to be with the close people in your family, and some family members you think are close to you; is not close to them and the only solution is to just take them out of your life. And for someone like me, it’s the most painful thing to do, but you have to get on with your life. But it’s the only option that will be a logical solution.
I write these public stories to show how I am unfairly having a void in my brain called understanding relationships and how its not me – it’s the other people have redefined relationships or ruining the definition. Sadly, its my own close family members that are redefining relationships.
