Jayeless

So, it came to my attention that after my Christmas Day aside, people may be concerned and want to know what happened afterwards. (And my lacklustre posts over the last few days might not be helping matters…) Anyway, I can oblige.

Boxing Day began with my mother pretending nothing had happened, and I ignoring her, as I would not pretend nothing had happened. Again, she got extremely drunk and picked a fight with me that night. She demanded to know how it was possible for cigarette smoke to make me feel sick, and proceeded to throw a tantrum because I answered the question (instead of getting flustered — she believes, at least when drunk, that it is impossible for cigarette smoke to make anyone feel sick, and therefore insists I pretend to feel sick just to piss her off). Apparently afterwards my sister Emma, overhearing the argument, approached mum to tell her she was being a “drunken cow” (that was how Emma described the argument) and our mother got even more angry. She ranted at length about how Emma and I were “ungrateful bitches” (grateful for what, I wonder? Verbal abuse? Damn, of course we should be grateful for that!) and so on.

Anyway, I was so angry about it that I stayed up until almost 4am telling Dad that something urgently needed to change (and venting generally, of course…). He agreed.

So, on the 27^th, Dad told my mother that her behaviour was unacceptable and this constant drunkenness could not go on, and it seemed that she took this to heart and she hasn’t really been drunk since Boxing Day. Things have been okay.

It’s hard to be totally optimistic because it’s only been three days. I’ve seen periods of time where she’s been better for three days and then relapsed — after this crisis, for instance, she drank very little for two or three days and then went right back to her old ways. And tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. I have hope, but only because I always hold out some degree of hope and I really want everything to work out. We will see what actually happens.

But if Dad can exert pressure on her once to achieve this kind of result, hopefully he can exert pressure again. Certainly it’s not like Emma or I could. I think in my mother’s mind we’ll be ten years old forever, and that means she never gives our opinions any weight (especially Emma’s, which she tends to dismiss with the words, “But you’re fifteen.” — so okay, she realises we’re not ten, but she TREATS us like we are.). But Dad, well, she can hardly dismiss him on the grounds that he’s too young to know what he’s talking about.

Anyway, I’m doing fine, and thanks for your concern, everyone.

I used to be so much more enthusiastic about Christmas when I was younger. The second it became December I’d beg dad (with my sister) to get us a Christmas tree for us to decorate. I have fond memories of the smell of pine and how it would fill our lounge room. And tinsel! Oh, how we loved tinsel. Our tree was always very plainly decorated — no baubles, and certainly no electric lights, but there would always be tinsel. We used the same tinsel year after year, placing it carefully back in the plastic bag each January for use the following December.

Of course, given the way my sister and I would fight over that tinsel — using it as tug-of-war rope, moving the other’s carefully-placed tinsel around after deciding it was in a stupid place, then using it to tie up the other’s wrists to prevent them from “ruining” the tree any more¹ — it got increasingly thin and unimpressive as the years went by, but we never invested in new tinsel.

A few years ago we did invest in some baubles though. However, not electric lights.

Also a few years ago — maybe the year before we bought the baubles — Dad decided to buy an artificial tree. Maybe he was getting sick of buying a new pine tree every year, or maybe he was sick of the way little pieces would fall off, get caught in the carpet, and be spiky. I’m not sure. But I haven’t enjoyed the smell of pine in the lounge room on Christmas morning for a long, long time.

And perhaps it’s related to that, or perhaps to the increasingly embarrassing state of our tinsel, or perhaps just to the fact that my sister and I are no longer little children, but Christmas has become less and less exciting each year. This year we didn’t even put up a Christmas tree. You know why? Because the Christmas tree was still up from last year.

The year before that, we only took it down in August.

It’s kind of ridiculous, I know. I miss the specialness of the Christmas season, as the time of year we got to decorate with tinsel and have the lovely smell of pine in our lounge room. I catch whiffs of pine occasionally, since a block of flats near our house grows pine trees in its front yard. But not in our lounge room, and not predominantly at Christmas.

The one thing Christmas does usually mean is spending time with family. My family’s not particularly close, and I don’t really see relatives like my cousins, aunts and uncles very often. However, we do usually make sure to catch up at Christmas. For as long as I can remember, we’ve caught up with my mum’s side of the family on Christmas Day, and my dad’s side on Boxing Day. In recent years we’ve also caught up with my dad’s side of the family on Christmas Eve, as my aunt and uncle have held an additional Christmas Eve dinner.

This year these traditions have been screwed over, though, until all that remains is the traditional Boxing Day thing rescheduled to Christmas Day. Certain relatives of mine are sadly spending Christmas in the hospital — my uncle (dad’s brother) was diagnosed with an extremely aggressive form of leukaemia about a week ago, and will be in hospital for at least the next four to five months. Also, my aunt (mum’s sister-in-law) is in hospital for a knee reconstruction. I’m guessing if they intend to hold her there over Christmas it was urgent, but it still sucks.

But we do still have that thing tomorrow, so I’ll still be catching up with family, just fewer people than I would be otherwise. I’m not expecting it to be particularly awful, just not a very Christmassy kind of Christmas.

1. I think I am joking on this particular point. I wouldn’t put it past my younger self, but I don’t actually remember ever doing anything like this.