I am needing to purge so purge I will …. ( I don’t need sympathy or anything else this is simply a place for me to write)

As a child Christmas was never a good time. And for a long while after I left home Christmas wasn’t something I really celebrated.

Basically because you always managed to fuck it up with your drunkeness or your dark moods that lashed out and slapped us all sideways. Normally it would be  a great morning of unwrapping presents and having a rare moment of all being happy together. Then we would get ready to go to a relatives house where all the extended family would gather for more presents and feasting and grandchildren and cousins running amok and the adults being jovial and joking and sharing funtimes. My blood family. It wasn’t yours though was it? And you always made it clear that you didn’t like being around them. Even after you treated my mother like shit they still accepted you. They gave all of us, the siblings, equal love. They didn’t care. My god they tried, every damn year.

Instead of arriving and enjoying the rest of the day you would get halfway there and decide that we weren’t going anywhere and turn back home. I remember the tears and consoling two little children who were alot younger than me who had no understanding of what was happening except we had no choice in the matter and a mother who didn’t drive. At the mercy of your mood swings as always.

But today? Christmas Day? Was this a cruel joke? Were you really that self absorbed in your own pile of shit that you didn’t see what you were doing?

Year after year, aprehension, worry that if we said or did the wrong thing we would cause you to get angry. You’d either turn into Dr.Jekyll and we’d all cringe and the day would be over and covered in that poisonous dark cloud or we’d go to family gatherings and you’d get blind drunk and be a total and utter embarrassment.

Then mum got wise to your shit. She learnt to drive, she left you at home to wallow in your own dark murk. We went and spent time in good company with family but all the while that darkness followed us wherever we went. It didn’t matter that we were away from it, but that knawing knowing that we would eventually have to come back home to that darkness. Usually it was you lying in a pool of your own piss, passed out, drunk.

By the time I left home I had no idea what real families did at Christmas time. All I knew is they were a time when it was best to not get my hopes up.

For a few years I spent Christmas with other friends who had nowhere to go or families were too far away. Personally I liked being far, far away. I missed my siblings and my mother but I sure as hell didn’t miss your abuse and the misery that sits around you like a diseased dark cloud. Then I decided that Christmas wasn’t my thing and that I would follow what felt right and do the Yule thing. Ancestral stuff, something that runs in my veins.

Then along came kiddo and I discovered the real joy of Christmas again, his joy. He is my gift in so many ways, year after year he teaches me things. And in turn he helps mummy light candles for Yule and do the baking. I made my own space with my own little family.

I spent a couple days with my brother & sister just before Christmas, we had the nieces and nephews and mum there. It was awesome. The only thing that irks me and it always does that no matter what we do there is always that dark cloud sitting in the background. And yet again you rose your ugly head in our thoughts.

We mumbled various bits and bobs about the fact that yet again you chose to not participate, not to see your grandchildren but instead choose a bottle over family. It does irk me. Not personally as my relationship with you died a long time ago. But to see the hurt in my brothers and sisters faces.

My sister is watching her father in law die from cancer, the last Christmas with his grandchildren and family. Have you hugged her and told her how wonderfully strong she is? No.

My brother has just had a beautiful wee baby daughter grace this world and it’s her first Christmas. You live less than 1km away … yet you’ve seen her once, and you were drunk.

My brother and  I had a deep talk and amongst chatter about a few things, including me telling him about the guilt I felt when I left home, I apologised for being absent from his life for the next five years and explained why I did what I did. He already knew why and understood. I love his heart.

He spoke about our childhood and the fact that we never really had a normal family, we didn’t hug or tell each other we loved one another, you isolated us from so many things, but the biggest thing that hurt was when my brother said he realised he’s never had a real father. A father that never said “I’m proud of you son”, never congratulated him on his engagement, never went to his wedding, never congratulated him on the birth of his first born or supported him through the complications of IVF. And so many more things. YOU know this already.

You have lost not one but three children over the years. Your choice to choose depression and alcoholism is stronger than your need for family. You choose to hurt and lash out with words, to criticise and never praise, to look for faults and not encourage or support.

What you don’t realise is all that anger and hurt has taught all three of us is that in the face of hard times, we all are there for one another. That love and understanding DOES conquer and that your darkness can fuck off back to where it dwells.

That the words “I love you” are easy to say. And say them we do.

That we CAN have Christmas back.

Our way.

With all of our beautiful children.

And most of all we all tell them how proud we are of them.

And all the while you can choose to sit in your dark little cave drinking from that bottle and choosing to regret and dwell on things that don’t matter, on things that are your own demons.

Not ours anymore.

It’s too late for you and I’ve accepted that but it doesn’t stop the hurt I see in those two, and them hurting hurts me.

Then I get pissed.

So I write.