Thanksgiving always evokes many mixed emotions for me. As a young girl growing up – it was always my favorite holiday. We would watch the Twilight Zone marathons on KTLA and help in the kitchen and smell the food. In general a lazy day during which my favorite TV show was on the whole time. Just a really nice time for me – if it got stressful I would zone. A little older and we would incorporate sneaking to the room or outside to smoke pot in between which made the smells and the eating and the laying around doing nothing that much better. The tradition changed a lot for me when my parents moved out of state when I was 23 years old. I had moved into my boyfriend’s home and the family was quite a bit different than mine. It was really different – a lot of drama – there were fights, the food would be done hours later than we were told it would be – the TV focus was on football so I would hole up in my bedroom watching the Twilight Zone and smoking pot alone and DRINKING, DRINKING, DRINKING! God did I love to get drunk!
Somewhere along the lines things got bad – REALLY BAD!
Flash forward; I am being guided into a house full people I don’t know, in so much pain I can barely walk, the fucking pain-pills weren’t even working anymore –
With so much make–up caked on my face to cover the bruises and marks of the beating I received the night before. And to top it off there was no fucking Twilight Zone on TV. FUCK – I just wanted to fucking die! Why didn’t he just kill me?
We had spent the morning up at the prison where we took his sister to visit her boyfriend who was in jail for I don’t remember what. We had to go with her because I had to go in as the visitor because he was blaming her for him being in jail or some such dramatic nonsense. I was in so much pain and had to stand in line and ride the bus and wait in the waiting area. It was such an ugly place to be watching the families. Such sadness exists in the world and so much of it was evident to me that day.
Then home to go to his Dad’s house to be with a bunch of relatives and people we didn’t even know. And I always had to put on a show for his Dad because my boyfriend wanted his Dad, who had ignored him for most his life, to love him more than he wanted anything else in the whole world.
I’ve had and done some things in my life that I have felt great shame for. I have been in more difficult, painful situations – but nothing in my entire life ever felt so degrading as I did when I was guided into that house – after being physically beaten and beaten down verbally for hours and hours – to look into the faces of “normal” people and try to smile and be polite and not grimace from the pain and try to act interested and not cry and not tell them that the person beside me being so charming was a monster in disguise.
It was one of those moments in life where everything just stops and you see things how they really are for just a moment – often referred to as a moment of clarity. Unfortunately it was just a fleeting moment and I continued to live in this insanity for another year, maybe even 2 years after that day and was nearly killed as a result of it.
I got clean in August (1995), left the boyfriend, got my own apartment –
So for my first Thanksgiving – I wanted it to be perfect so I basically invited no one! I bought a turkey and all the fixins’ – called mom got all the instructions – I was ready to create the perfect Thanksgiving for myself –
So I wake up – and turn the TV to channel 5 – NO FUCKING TWILIGHT ZONE!!!!
It was the first year they sold the show to a cable channel and the marathon wasn’t on –
I was devastated – OK – so the serenity prayer – over and over and over – grant me the fucking serenity to accept the fucking things I can not change – but what kind of cruel joke was the universe playing on me?
So I finally calm down – Forrest Gump was on cable - I could watch that for the 99th time. I go in to the kitchen to clean the Turkey and one thing that was stressed in the turkey cooking directions was to make sure the inside of the turkey was clean – so I was on it! I even got a flash light to look inside and make sure – That was one of the ugliest things I’d ever seen! I was horrified and lost my appetite and ended up unable to eat because that kept my tummy turning all day!
So my lesson was that alone is not the way to do it either. By the next year, I had gained many friends and was able to spend Thanksgiving with families and friends. Last year a friend and I who cooked dinner took plates of food down to Hollywood and dropped them off to homeless people that we found on the street which was very gratifying.
I have lived alone for the last 2 Thanksgivings and have been blessed to have wonderful people in my life to spend these days with. A few months ago I decided I was ready for communal living again and moved into an apartment with a great friend as my room mate and one of my very bestest friends down the hall and other assorted friends scattered throughout the building and the neighborhood. So we’re cooking at the apartment today – just like a real fucking family – FUCK YEAH!!!
I am in such gratitude for my life, my friends (the family of my choosing) and for myself and all the growth and change that I have invited in and embraced in my life! I am so blessed and thankful for all of my friends and my family.
And I haven’t even checked if the Twilight Zone marathon is on yet!
