As some of you may or may not recall, I'll be leaving Boston to head back to the Midwest to spend the holidays with various family members this week. For any of us who live far away from the regions where we were born, returning for a holiday visit isn't always the Norman Rockwellesque Christmas scene everyone else envisions it to be. It some cases it can be filled with an entire sleigh-full of anxiety and apprehension. Hell, the pangs I feel in my gut about leaving Boston on Wednesday morning are similiar to the discomfort a good mother or father feels when they drop their 5 year-old off at school for their very first day of kindegarten - you know it's all gonna turn out in the wash but in the meantime you continuously say to yourself "Oh, I hope I'm doing the right thing, what if this-or-that happens???" Suffice to say, Boston will survive my abscence, I just hope I do too.
Dont get me wrong, I'm already very excited about the thought of seeing my Grandma and spending time with her. I love her and miss her dearly but quite frankly, she really is the main reason I make this trek every year. With being 88, as much as I want her to live forever I know that that simply is not realistic, so anytime I can afford to go back for Christmas, I will. As for the rest of my family members, well, let's just say that when it comes to ole' Spice here, you're always gonna get the truth about any and every aspect of my life. Bottom line is this - when my Grandma is no longer alive, I will not be making these Christmas trips anymore. Oh, I'll go back to visit the area where I was born-n-raised every now-n-then but it's not going to be a #1 Top Priority like it is now. Because when my Grandma dies, the main family support I have shared with her and been blessed with because of her, will be gone. Yes, it will live on in the memories I have of her, I'm not saying that, but when that time comes it's gonna be a very different world for me.
Though I did come out at a fairly early age, 16, even with my family knowing that I have been openly gay all these years, as well as open to them about my Hiv+ status, those arent the reasons why I have tensions with various family members, but I'm sure they compound the real reasons. No, I'm not gonna go on a diatribe about how much I despise the Midwest either because let''s call a spade a spade here - just because I have a very negative relationship with several of my family members does not mean that every family in the region where I come from is the same exact way. In other words, the way a group of people behaves has nothing to do with the geographical location where they reside. I'll admit, there have been times when I've made it sound that way but that's only because of what I like to appropriately call "the family bullshit." Such bullshit doesnt have to happen just at Christmas-time, it can happen on any given day of the year. Yeah, actually, looking back even further in retrospect, I can see how who I am could add to their personal conflicts with me.
When it comes to my family, I am what is considered the dirtiest of the infamous "black sheep syndrome", as I prefer to call it. For some unexplainable reason - though I'm sure that Freud or Jung would have a heyday with the people I'm related to! - their mentality is this - IF you choose to leave the Midwest and you go out and live your own life and are truly happy, that makes you bad, you're a bad person and you need to be punished because goddamn it, you had the nerve to get the fuck outta there and make a life for yourself WITHOUT their help, their approval and/or their stamp of approval! In addition, if you go back there for anything else outside of a visit, then you need to be punished, even annihalated mentally because you are bad, goddamn you, you are bad AND on top of it, you better sacrifice everything to the Church and its concept of what is God because your life wouldnt be in the state its in if you would go to Church every goddamn Sunday and worship God for the horrible, nasty, rotten fucken sinner you are! Goddamn you to fucken living hell for even entertaining the thought of thinking with a free mind, a free heart, a free soul! Yeah, it most sincerely is THAT bad back there. Therefore I ask any of you out there this - is it really any wonder why my contempt for my family sometimes breeds contempt for the area where they live? Quite frankly, I can't imagine anyone not feeling the way I do about it, especially if they woulda lived in the same identical environment that I did so many years ago. My Grandma was the only shining light I had during those formative years - and even beyond.
Alotta people dont know this, but after I went through the cancer I was just too damn sick afterwards to go back to work immediately, so I took several months off, and went back to a place where I knew for a fact I could heal myself and rebuild my inner strength to take on the world again, literally - my Grandma's house. Someday I must write an entire piece dedicated to that one single place because a lot of who and what I am as a human being originated in those very walls. A rather modest, simple-looking older home to others but for me, it truly was a magical, safe haven where I could literally stabalize and re-energize my psyche. My Grandma knew all of that which is why she welcomed me there, because like myself she knew if I was ever gonna pull through all the way, it was because of the unconditional love and acceptence I received from her, ever since I was a small child, that was gonna recharge my inner spirit. It worked too. In less than 8 months I was back home in Boston. Of course, I also had to contend with a tremendous amount of naysaying from my other family members who would visit there.
I remember all kinds of things that were said but they werent much different from what I described two paragraphs up. Oh, the purely unadulterated bullshit I heard! Things like "Well you know, you wouldnt be going through these hard times if you woulda given yourself totally to God." Totally give myself to God? What the fuck is up with that pseudo-psycho Children-of-the-Corn-like crap they peddle back there? Whoever or whatever is responsible for creating me, made me with a set of brains to use and a heart overflowing with compassion; brainwashing had nothing to do with it whatsoever. Those people back there are absolutely right - I am different from them. But different in the sense that I learned a long time ago that if you wanna succeed in life you gotta get up off your ass and make it happen cause Honey, no one is gonna friggin hand it to you, I'll tell you that. Unless, of course, you marry rich, but that's never been the case for me! Whether you belong to any certain religion or not, going to church never ever solved any of my problems, I had to learn to do that on my own.
Of course, being Hiv+ has always made me an even more "bad person" in my family's eyes because that's what I get for "being gay" and loving another man. "Being gay" is okay but now that I am Hiv+, well, that's God's personal reaction to it all. No one knows how many times I've watched that one episode of "Designing Women" where the exact same issue was covered and thought to myself "Oh, if people only really knew." But bless my Grandma throughout it all. Any time anyone would (or still does) make comments about it, that dear sweet woman who never swore a word in her life will let out one helluva string of words for all ears to hear "Knock it off with that bullshit! You people are cruel, sick bastards!" No shit! You'd walk by her, see her sitting in her rocker and would never in a million years expect someone as meek and demure-looking as her to use such raucous language, let me tell you!
Unlike some of the other Hiv'ers I know, I'm not gonna candycoat any of this stuff for anyone out there, because it's the reality I live. Do you know what my family told me when Jack died? "Oh, gee, we're sorry to hear that. How's your job? Have you found a church to go to yet?" That's it. No moral support, no sympathy cards, nothing but a loada coldhearted, unfeeling gibberish - and that was it. Do you wanna know the only time I hear from or see any of immediate family members? When I am close to death. During the cancer, sure, I saw my Mom and one of my sisters - once - but that was it. Wait, there was one other person, the only person in my entire family that has always, continuously been there for me - my Grandma. When Jack died she not only called once a day, she gave me comfort, she sent a card and she even sent flowers. And, when I went through the cancer, guess who was waiting for me once I came outta recovery from the surgery? Guess who went with me and held my hand through a few of those long chemo sessions? You guessed it, good ole' Grandma. A person can't putta pricetag on something like that but if I had to, I could truthfully say that that dear woman is worth every single penny I spend on those trips to go visit her; and, so much more.
I dont think I need to go any further in my description of what kinda people my family members really are and besides, I dont want this piece to be about me pissin-n-moanin about those scallywags. All I wanted to do is give the full scoop (more like a load or two) of what it's like to deal with them during the holidays. Be that as it may, I'm not gonna let any of them ruin my Christmas spirit for I intend to have one helluva great Christmas this year. Looking so damn forward to spending time with Grandma, as well as several of my cousins too, two of which I'll be staying with while I'm there. Usually I getta rental car and stay in a hotel when visiting my relatives but this year I simply cant afford it. Oh well, now you at least know why I wanted to win big at Foxwoods this past Saturday night! I'm gonna have alotta fun once I get there - visiting with folks, doing a bitta shopping here-n-there and sleeping-in as late as I possibly can every single day!
Yes, I know I'll survive the visit back there just fine but still, I do envy all those people out there who have the picture-perfect "Twas The Night Before Christmas" holiday season with their family members. It must be nice though I suspect everyone out there has a certain degree of family friction to contend with during the holidays, it's just that there are some folks out there such as myself who are more open and honest about it. Whatever your holiday plans are, I think that staying true to yourself and keeping it real are the only two essential components that you need in order to contend with whatever family crap that may come flying your way. Like so many others out there, I truly wish the holidays could be a time of utter and complete peace but no matter how unrealistic that may be to expect in certain families, there's certainly nothing wrong in striving for it, just as long as you dont lose yourself along the way. Thank you for reading.
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