Holidays

Okay, so I have to indulge in some selfishness here for a moment.

I am annoyed, although I'm not sure that's the right word, by the fact of having to spend the holidays with Sean's family, aka people I don't like or feel in any way connected to.

On some level, when I left Ben, I think I was relieved to be putting family holidays aside for a while, just in general. I actually liked spending holidays with Ben's family, though. They were fun. It was about gorging yourself on great food and drinking champagne and taking naps. But I think I still got bored a lot of the time, especially when my friend Carmen stopping attending the festivities after she moved to LA. So I was ready to let them go.

But I didn't get any relief from family holidays, because I got together with Sean only a few months after leaving Ben, and last year we did Thanksgiving and Christmas with his family.

And we will again this year, although the Thanksgiving holiday is particularly difficult because they want to do it on November 11 in the Bay, and I'll already be taking time off work the week before to take my CSET exam. I can't see doing it again a week later. It really irritates me that they just pick this day instead of doing it the week of Thanksgiving when no one will be surprised I can't work anyway. And I thought they'd be up here--not that I'm particularly sad that the house is not going to be overrun with people.

What it comes down to is I don't want to spend holidays with these people, particularly Sean's mother. I think I was about 18 when I decided I was never spending another holiday with my step-mother's family and it was a glorious decision I have never regretted.

And if there's one thing I learned from going through the divorce, it's that if you don't want to do something, or you do want to do something, it's better to go with what you want and blow off society and people's expectations. Because living under oppressive expectations and rules is a half-life and a waste.

So the problem is Sean. Who is sad I don't like his mother and brother. Who has pretty much always spent holidays with his family, adhered to their scheduling without question, except the year he was in Hawai'i. Which makes me want to move to Hawai'i. I went and told him I didn't particularly want to spend any more holidays with people who aren't my family and who I don't feel any connection to. I wasn't angry or bitchy about it, but I wish I'd talked to someone else because he doesn't need to hear that sort of thing. It makes him unhappy and at this point I haven't figured out a viable alternative, so what's the point?

On the one hand, and this would be the hand that remembers what a relief it was to get a divorce, it might be best to say hasta la vista to spending holidays with people I don't feel I should be obligated to in any way (except gratitude for letting me stay in their mountain cabin rent free--grimace). On the other hand, it's a fast way to make me the "hated girlfriend." I'm on thin ice as it is, I think, because his mom finds me intimidating or whatever, and because his brother doesn't like me. As it is I don't think I'll make Nov. 11, because I really can't take the time off. From there, it's not going to take much to cast me in the role of despised Other.

I think miserable holidays are an American staple. They exist in other cultures, but I think in America, it's become this known thing. You're more of an exception if you enjoy going home for the holidays. They made a movie about this, so it must be true! People have very ambivalent relationships with their families. I know this. I accept it. People even have to accept difficult in-laws. Sure. But that's the thing: this is not my family. These aren't my in-laws.

Sean and I are in a gray area. We live together. We intend to have a commitment ceremony eventually. But we are not married.

Ultimately, though, I think that's a technicality. I have nowhere else to be, but perhaps in my own home, which at the moment isn't even my own home, it's theirs anyway. I have no family locally, and no interest in spending the holidays on the east coast with my dad. I could try to go to France for Christmas, but that would require money that neither my mother nor I can spare.

It's a bind. I'd rather not go hang with Sean's family and deal with the tension and weirdness and feeling like I'm not a part of it, but I think this year at least, I had better suck it up. I'm not ready to be reviled. They are so tight knit. If I bailed, in days the phone calls would weave a net of outrage and vilification that I'd never get out of--they still think of Sean in ways they defined for him many years ago. He's changed so much since then but they can't or won't see it. And they love him. I'd just become the bad girlfriend in their minds.

After a point, I don't give a shit. But I guess I think it's a little early to let that happen. I've known them just less than a year. Maybe these holidays will be better than the last ones. Maybe not. I'll live. And maybe next year I'll figure out a way out of them.