Tom's Existential Thanksgiving
It is funny how, even when you make monumental breakthroughs in your conceptualization of your place in a community (extended family), you can still fail to be able to effectively actualize them. Like... so my whole family is totally crazy. My grandmother can't sit still for more than two seconds and spends the whole thanksgiving cleaning unnecessary parts of her house (watering the plants three times a day, constantly emptying the nut shells and refilling/washing/consolidating the nut bowls, vacuuming while people are talking...), my great uncle just broods about how he is about to die and hasn't made a mark on the world, how it is probably his fault that his son has a guilt complex, his wife is the most passive aggressive jewish bitch I have ever met, my uncle can't sit still any more than his mother can, my mom is a menopausal mess who breaks down crying at the thought of anything remotely sentimental, my dad is almost as escapist as I am, my grandpa spends the whole time either on bike rides or working on his matrices, his son talks about nothing but the wall street journal and tells his "daughter" to do her math homework like... forty times a day, his wife speaks little english, richard's brother terrorizes the little kids in a Mice of Men sort of gentle, dangerous clumsiness, his daughter can only talk about opening new grocery stores in connecticut and how many kinds of cookies she knows how to bake, and meanwhile, David's chain smoking escapist quietness seems like a calm bit of sanity despite his schizophrenia. And I am sure I was just as bad, constantly escaping for my "long walks" to "get away from the chaos." Well, I suppose that really is what I was doing, but nic fixes are a good enough excuse... Anyway, I am totally crazy, right? And a huge family failure because I failed to allow my family to live through me vicariously as I soar to the top of the music world as a famous virtuoso oboist... but you know what? None of them made it either, so why the fuck would they judge me? I really should have gone up to uncle don and said "I know you think that your parents failed you because they didn't start giving you violin lessons when you were four, but you know what? Being a musician sucks! It is not a fulfilling career and it has one of the lowest job satisfaction rates of any career ever! If you think you would have been happier as Itzak Perlman or something, think again! You have depression issues that have nothing to do with how you lived your life and everything to do with the outlook you had on it while you were living it. Honestly, it is family. The last thing I should have to do is pretend to be someone I am not. I am crazy, so are all these people, and honestly, it doesn't matter because we are all stuck loving eachother unconditionally whether or not we can stand eachother. So there.
I did have a number of good conversations with my parents. I figured telling them that I had just been having depression/anxiety issues would make them less likely to give me shit about smoking, and it worked. In fact, they were both very understanding of my escapism, and even joined me on some long (cigarette free) walks.
And it is always good to see becky.
But now I am stressed out and it is manifesting itself as food insanity. I hate my negative body imagine. I wish I was sane.
On the plus side, a night of drunken affectionate silliness seems to have washed away a lot of the stress of my Thanksgiving and I am feeling rather smitten, empowered and ready to write four papers in the next week and a half.
I did have a number of good conversations with my parents. I figured telling them that I had just been having depression/anxiety issues would make them less likely to give me shit about smoking, and it worked. In fact, they were both very understanding of my escapism, and even joined me on some long (cigarette free) walks.
And it is always good to see becky.
But now I am stressed out and it is manifesting itself as food insanity. I hate my negative body imagine. I wish I was sane.
On the plus side, a night of drunken affectionate silliness seems to have washed away a lot of the stress of my Thanksgiving and I am feeling rather smitten, empowered and ready to write four papers in the next week and a half.