) close that parenthesis
Anyway, with my family. WOW! Depressing. It's not the worst. But it's the same depressing sort of situation that arises each time. No one is up front, no one expects or tries to actually spend "quality time" with each other, or rather a few people want to and the rest do not, my mother's a textbook emotional manipulator -- I gasped upon reading the list of "warning signs" because each one, EACH ONE had come out of my mouth in the seven months of living at home. And my aunt rolls her eyes and feels like a martyr for e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g, even when what is it really? She just doesn't say what she means, even when asked in an open, unassuming way. Then lash out at other people for not reading her eye rolls. Then yell at other people for rolling their eyes.
SSDD, for real. I was going to tweet about it but what's the point
Today I kind of took a "whatevs" position to try and deal with this. I acknowledge that I'm a control freak so I take extra care to NOT try and control others. Then my energy is put toward not taking any eye-roll personally. Then any remaining energy is put toward being thankful for their presence. But I still can't shake the feeling of wishing I could skip out, or silently planning to skip out next year.
But then I'm always hit with guilt and fear about skipping, and it's all morbid shit, and I can't quite deal with it.
Thanksgiving was often the time I would be hit with a HUGE bout of homesickness in Japan, for timing reasons (three months after the school semester would start), weather (bitter cold), lack of contact from family (ignored e-mails, plus they always claim not to have Skype), and lack of any after-work resources for stuffing, canned cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie. But now? I dunno. I dinnae.
Thanksgiving? Dinnae.