Mom and I had a huge fight the other night. I'm a talking massive, screaming and cursing our lungs out fight. (This is what happens when you have two bad communicators under the same roof.)
I'm almost shamed to admit this, but I know anyone who says they don't have a good fight every now and again is full of crap. People fight. It's just what happens when they don't see eye to eye. People are stubborn. Hot headed. Determined. The more you believe you're right, the harder you fight for what you believe in. But, regardless, here is what went down.
We had a house fire a few years ago, and we lost everything. It has been hard, but I've come to terms with it for the most part. The one thing that has bugged me the most, though, has consistently been Christmas. I've tried, and I've tried, but I've just been so depressed around Christmas. I don't have the stocking my grandmother knit me, I don't have the ornaments I made in kindergarten, I don't have anything I used to have. The manger is gone, the nutcrackers are gone, the candles and the figurines are gone. All our old ornaments, gone. Everything is gone.
It was exciting to move into a brand new house, and buy brand new things, but a brand new Christmas seems sacrilegious. I know it's just "stuff," but it's like walking into a stranger's house. It just seems wrong.
Well, the past few years I've never cared less about Christmas. I've decided that I just didn't have the spirit anymore. But, over the past 2 years, something else changed too. My cousins had their first baby, and their second. Now they've got two, beautiful little babies having their first Christmases. That, to me, is a reason to be cheery.
I thought about it last year, and I thought my mother had agreed with me: we should go to Beantown for Christmas. We've both been depressed. We've both been miserable. So, we should go down and play with babies--our favorite past time.
That was the decision last year. I'm pretty sure we agreed upon it unanimously.
With our friend's recent passing, there has been stress. Normally, she is the one to throw a Christmas Eve party, and we'd all attend. Us, our neighbors, and her family--who likes to be waited on hand and foot. My mom has constantly said "I'm not doing it. I'm not cooking, I'm not cleaning, I'm not waiting, I'm not serving, I'm not doing crap."
She says this, but then she'll go and do it anyway. Which is why I thought our pact last year would be a solution. I've been telling Joe that we've been going down to Beantown for Christmas for about a week now. I know it's not what he wants to hear, but what am I supposed to do? That was the decision.
Well, now the family we were going to visit are coming up after Christmas--which is the greatest Christmas gift EVER. I've been saying, "All I want is to see my Babies" and now I've got them. But, when I said, "I still want to go down to Mass for Christmas, though," I became, in an instant, the world's most ungrateful, horrible, traitorous person ever to live.
I can't even remember how the fight started, but it went the way our usual fights go. She started bitching about me to one of her friends, filling their heads with false information and twisting my words as she saw fit.
"I still want to go see them on Christmas, I've been depressed" somehow translates to "You are a terrible mother and I hate spending Christmas with you, bitch."
I defend myself, and she gets mad, says she'll call her friend back, and then comes at me with stupid shit that happens weeks ago. Like, I came home one night and didn't feel like watching TV one night because we do it all the time--that loosely translates to, "Your lazy and fat and all you do is sit home all day and watch TV, Mom."
We yell and scream for a good 15 minutes, at least, until I lose it and kick over the litterbox. That's great. Now I'm a raging psychopath, but it's extremely frustrating to argue with someone who doesn't listen to what you're saying. Note to self: if you are arguing with someone, don't scream "Calm down, you're acting like a psychopath." It doesn't help. So I call her crazy, and she tells me to move out. I say fine I will, and she says good screw; Same old, same old.
Then, to be the incredible bitch that I am, I tell her to get me the vacuum. Normally I'd ask nicely, but since I was such an "ungrateful bitch" I decided to live up to my character.
Now, we have a central vacuum, so it's basically this big, long hose that attaches to a small roller-thing which just plain sucks. So in a frustrated attempt to detach the stupid, malfunctioning equipment, I wound up smacking myself in the face with the metal part of the hose.
Ouch.
Chin's better today, and it's not as bad as I exaggerate it to be for sympathy purposes, but it still sucks. The medicine I'm on thins my blood, so it took a good hour or more to clot and stop bleeding. Even the next day, it was leaking a bit. I may have chipped a tooth or two, not sure. I was sure I needed stitches. I'm sure I'll have a scar. Great. At least it's under my chin.
My jaw hurts when I open my mouth, or chew. And as much as I try out of pure habit, I cannot rest my head upon my fist. It hurts. I hurt. My whole body. I just want to go back to bed.
Still not sure what I'm doing for Christmas.
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