Mom and I were talking about Christmas which as of this writing is only 11 days away and realized that neither of us seem to care about it. I realized that there is nothing I want…at least nothing I can have.

MY CHRISTMAS LIST:

I want this desert nightmare over with. I want this noose called a house out from around my neck. It’s just tight enough to cut off my breathing some but not quite tight enough to finish the job and give me peace. I want it over.

I want my old life back but have come to realize that I will NEVER have it again. Even after Mom is gone and I’m back on my own it won’t be the same because I’m not the same person I was almost 7 years ago when I came out to this hell on earth on a promise that didn’t exist. All the things I once enjoyed no longer mean anything to me, all the things I thought were real have revealed themselves to be just another lie. Even spending time on the computer means nothing. All it is for me is a sometimes distraction from the hurt, but even when I can achieve the distraction it’s only fleeting.

I want peace in my heart, mind and soul. I want all the bad things that I thought I had previously banished from my head to go away again. But I don’t think I’ll be able to get rid of them this time. They’ve got too deep a hold now and I can feel how deeply they’ve dug in but for the moment I don’t have the freedom to give them what they want because I’m stupid enough to still, after everything that’s gone on, think of and put other people first. I can’t leave Mom alone, especially out here.

I want the fear to go away. The fear of what is around every corner both literal and figurative. The fear of imposing myself on other people when it’s clear they don’t want me. The fear of what happens if I ask for something (respect? consideration? love?) that I obviously do not deserve nor have any right to. The fear of overstepping the boundries that have been set for me by other people. The fear of the future because I don’t have one iota of control over anything that happens.

I want the blackness that’s inside of me all the time now to go back to gray like it used to be.

So Santa, can you help me out with any of this? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Mom and I were talking the other day and I was VERY pleased to hear that she has finally and for real accepted the truth of our situation here in the desert hellhole we are stuck in. She admitted that she knows that not only are we hopelessly out of place here but that we are not really wanted here. I’ve known for a while why we were “asked” to move out here and the selfishness of the reasons was heartbreaking but now Mom gets it. We are here for someone else’s convenience…because it made things easier for someone, certainly not for me as things are worse for me here than they were back home.

X Marks The Spot

Back home I was losing it fast but at least there was family support. I know I could count on my mother’s sisters to be there if needed whereas out here I don’t believe I can count on mine to be there, as least not in a way that I would need. I realize that she has a right to her own life but sometimes family obligations DO need to be met whether we like it or not. But I guess that’s water under the bridge now since I don’t think I even care anymore. I’ve accepted that I’m on my own with things and will deal as best I can but it will be the proverbial “last nail in my coffin”. With the way I now feel it’s as if I’ve already died and just need to allow my body to lie down which, if things continue the way they are, will be very soon. That’s a promise.

Anyway back to the original point of the post…Mom knows we need to go home and we have been discussing it. With her though it’ll be a drawn out drama filled thing but it’s become reality and for me that’s a positive thing.

I know this is a week or so early but I thought I would take a look back on the past year. To be honest, most of 2008 is NOT something I want to remember. It was the year that I finally accepted some hard truths about my family and myself.

But there were a few goods parts too. Yeah, I’m as amazed as anyone about that. In the beginning of the year I started a new pastime that I really think I could enjoy especially if family wasn’t interfering (yep, there’s that bad stuff again!). I’ll explain. I started creating stained glass stuff. I could really get into this as it’s an incredible feeling to watch something come to life and know that it’s because *I* made it happen. Now for the bad part…Mom insisted that I pursue this hobby out in the garage. I would have setup my workstation in the house like a real person would but having to listen to Mom go on and on about it was too much to deal with, so I setup in the garage. It’s not that that is a totally bad place to do something like this but it means that here in the boiling pit of hell that I live in I can’t work on anything in the summer months (which out here is about 6 months long)…it’s just too fucking hot. And there is also the thing about Mom starting her usual panic rant about money anytime I say I want to buy more glass. So yeah, that shit does take some of the passion out of things. But in the short time that I was able to work on stained glass I created something that I am really proud of (see image on right). This is something I hope to continue with.

The second good thing came out of having to take a break from the the first good thing – the stained glass stuff. Since I couldn’t work on the stained glass during the summer months, in August I started creating themes for Wordpress to be distributed publicly thru my new site The Cloisters. Much to my pleasure and surprise, my themes are fairly successful. And it really is a great feeling when someone likes something that I had an incredible amount of fun creating. It’s awesome! So check out the site and maybe download one of my themes – I offer pretty decent support too!

The third good thing was getting to go back east for a week in June. I swear the minute the plane landed back there I felt I was home. That’s a feeling I haven’t had since I came out here to this desert wasteland. I do have some pictures that I took and will eventually get up on this site. And since I already wrote about the trip in the post Back Home Again, I won’t repeat things here.

I think maybe I’ll stop here and try, for once, to keep things light and end this hellish year on a positive note. So Happy Holidays to everyone and here’s hoping 2009 will bring some good changes.