Well, if I felt that my recent lack of angst and anxiety were reason for having difficulty finding things to write about, consider it my brog’s lucky day as both angst and anxiety have returned with but just a few mere phone calls with my family, to put me back in a state of mind where I want to vent to people around me, but don’t really want to burden anyone, so it turns into ultimately a great big vomiting of words onto whomever wishes to read them.
I won’t get into extensive detail, but I’ve made no secret about my parents getting divorced, and as much as I’d have hoped it would have been an amicable and clean separation, naturally it was and is not, and suddenly my plans over the Thanksgiving break that I had leisurely looked forward to have turned into a period of time in which I am basically dreading.
Why? Because I’m going home for Thanksgiving.
I do not have any genuine problems with my family and extended family, but there’s no denying that I’m kind of a black sheep in the family by proxy of my choice of career, general life’s choices, the fact that I live far away, and that I’m the youngest of my generation that is still unmarried and therefore has to have his life in disarray. Needless to say, I’m often prime target for lectures, unwanted advice and prayers, and criticism in general, all things that I really don’t ever want to listen to.
Such are large contributors to why I’ve generally had an aversion to going home for the holidays, because it just seems like everything’s going to be a greater headache than something enjoyable.
However, another large contributor to why I’ve not gone home for the vast majority of past Thanksgivings is that I’ve basically got my own annual Thanksgiving holiday traditions established, and I don’t have any need to go anywhere.
Our doors open up for those friends and acquaintances of Jen and myself who are in a similar boat and live in the greater Atlanta area devoid of local family, whether by proximity or choice, and we have a massive Thanksgiving dinner like the vast majority of Americans. But instead of judgment, pissing contests and lectures, it’s a more relaxed atmosphere of food, board games, and trashy television.
And then the remainder of the evening, into the AM hours is typically spent doing shitloads of online shopping and/or strategizing braving the nightmarish battlefields of retail for Black Friday. Usually, thanks to the advancement of online shopping, I can tackle some of the big ticket things I want to purchase online, leaving the actual Black Friday itself for Jen and I to go out and leisurely clean-up duty of retailers, and seeing what’s left from the ransacked shelves and racks of clothing stores and random miscellaneous shops.
Capitalistic? Sure. But it’s still something I’ve enjoyed doing over the last few years, and something that I’m actually quite sour about knowing that I’m going to have to forego it this year. I typically purchase a lot of clothing and accomplish a good bit of Christmas shopping during this time as well. I’m still likely to be glued to my tablet or laptop on Thanksgiving, but Black Friday itself isn’t looking too promising for my agenda.
It’s the fact that I’m kind of being forced to walk away from my traditions and into a proverbial wolves’ den is what makes me upset the most. My family is my family and I have unconditional love for them sure, but the circumstances this time around are not necessarily the most appealing, and despite the fact that I will still be going up, it will be under obvious protest.
