Without going into the back story about the creature that was/is my mother, certainly a tale for another day, I will try to explain why I don’t do holidays.

Every holiday, and it matters not what holiday it was – could be Flag Day, a birthday, or Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter – whatever, you name it, the mother made sure that everyone was miserable.

Every holiday I could be sure to get a beating – why? Who knows, she never needed a reason. Actually, wait, the reason I was beaten on a regular basis was that I was alive and breathing. It infuriated her that I existed. I was abused from the time I was a fetus. The physical abuse pretty much tapered off when I got into my teens. I was bigger than she was. The emotional/psychological abuse didn’t stop until I was 48 years old and I cut off all contact with her. But as I said that is another story.

Every holiday she would be screaming “I’ll make you remember {fill in the holiday here} 19{fill in year here} while beating the crap out of me. And I do remember them, every one.

Not happy memories at all. Not even one small tiny happy holiday memory. Mention a holiday and I flash back to anger, screaming, beatings. One Christmas I had a solo with the church choir and she forbade me to go and then made sure I couldn’t sneak out. She knew it was important to me. She knew it made me happy. And goddamn it all to hell, I wasn’t going to be happy if she had anything to say about.

I keep saying that I don’t hate her any more; that I have decided to believe that she is/was mentally ill and not just plain evil. But when I think of the holidays in particular, the hate does comes rumbling up. The holiday beatings, the holiday abuse, some how stand out more than all the other beatings and abuse.

So don’t talk to me about holidays. Don’t wish me a happy anything. I don’t know how. I never learned.