Finding Happiness Within the Pain

<p>Christmas hurts. Please don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas as a whole, but at the same time, it hurts. My mind plays back to Christmas music being played, of dad hanging the lights and my mom helping him hold them and my sister and I sorting through the old ornaments that had been passed down through the generations. Such a gentle memory within my mind. If only it could stop there, but it doesn’t. I long to be an ostrich and hide my head in the sand so I don’t have to see the memories that dance within my mind and I can just go along and pretend they aren’t there and they didn’t happen. I can’t though and so that is where the hurt begins.

Abusers don’t stop abusing just because it’s Christmas. Nightmares don’t end just because you’re awake. The same body that bore me as an infant, the same hands that prepared my bottles, the same voice that should have sang lullabies became my living nightmare.

I remember standing, watching my sister as she got to prance around in her beautiful new Christmas dress as my mother pulled my old wool skirt from the closet and quickly matched it to a horrible velour sweater as she watched my face, praying for any excuse to backhand me and then take my ungrateful tail to my dad and tell him how horrible I was because heaven forbid should my dad not be upset with me too. As I opened my few gifts that my mother had picked out for me that she knew I had no interest in, she would just sit and watch me with such a vindictive look on her face. She seemed to get pure enjoyment from hurting me. My brother would squeal as he opened gift after gift of toys he had shown interest in, boots he had told Santa about and hot wheel toys he would play with a time or two and then no more. My sister would burst into happy tears while squeezing her cabbage patch doll and mom and dad would say how much they knew she would love it.

I’d just sit on the outside looking in, watching their pure and utter joy, not just on my sister and brother’s faces but on my parents as well. I would wonder what I did wrong, why didn’t they love me and why they didn’t treat me like my sister and brother. I still wonder.

This year I didn’t get invited to celebrate Christmas with my parents, with my siblings and their children. 40 years of looking in on their happiness. 1 year of looking in at my own.</p>