So guys…thanksgiving was, for me, a pretty standard thing anymore. If you’d been following along you’d remember I traded a pretty decent circle of support and friends…a chosen family, as it were…I traded them in for a different life in Colorado a half dozen years ago now and though I feel regret is a waste of time and certainly would never have brought me Don–trading that real family in for a non-family experience was a mistake. How ironic that my blood makes me feel less like me than the people I care to call family. Granted part of the sell itself was getting to know my birth family–which I have in some respects. But in that getting to know each other, I think they have discovered we probably never would have normally crossed any circles anywhere in this life. There is nothing common but the vagina we came out of for my mother’s son and daughter. Both my blood mother and father raised their children with religious foundations I have no interest in understanding in any respect except to know there’s something inherent in religious teachings that is missing in me–and that, I have come to realize–is guilt. Thank you mom and dad, for the guilt free childhood except to know my mother hated me–but yeah–my birth mother was so invested in me getting that religious foundation she had me listed as a baby with a preferred protestant upbringing. Good thing I was such a reject I got out of foster care with my parents (my eye cysts if you do not know).

The best thing about an upbringing free of those teachings— I feel no guilt for doing things that aid in my forward movement in mind or peace or space–I cannot be guilted, clearly, by any overarching familial responsibility because I haven’t had one–and to be honest the one I did have did make me feel alien and unwanted to such a great extent when I left–I left and barely called back for years. So, I do what I want, fuck anyone trying to guilt me into anything. I am not a criminal. I help everyone, literally, I try to help everyone I can with anything I can–that proverbial shirt off my back, opportunity to help you out, that’s what I do. I see certain levels of giving in the blood-related parts of me…but not the kind I try to be a part of, the life changing kind.

Now my mother and father are in Tennessee now after leaving Massachussets earlier this year and my sister in Maine, brother in Massachusetts still–but–to be entirely honest the closeness factor would be well represented by the fact I am pretty sure neither one of them, my brother and sister (the ones I grew up with)–have my phone number, no, my sister got it to do the dog picture, but neither one used it before very recently. And I got married in February and never told anyone.

My birth mother has turned a little bit into a crazy person who I cannot recognize–I literally have nothing nice to say except emotionless pleasantries as clearly the grandbabies have taken all her attention yet she has neglected to recognize all the work I tried to push along in the hoarder building was supposed to help with that time she holds dear. Nothing from her in days, not that that is odd. Then again the last messages from me were not the most love-filled but that’s the way it goes sometimes.

And everyone else…well fuck it. I say all the time I would fucking disappear in a heartbeat if I could…I wish we could manage to plan some secret move somewhere so much better and have that hope that fuels good things to look forward to and a sunnier future in front of us, but let’s be realistic….we are legitimately stuck here with no possibility right now. I just did my benefits and our biweekly benefits deduction is more than I make a week as is my rent even in the cheap situation. So–50% if it all is gone before I even get to think…and the rest is clearly tagged for a payment plan or whatever from the endless source of them. God you should see this…I have a calendar on my fake pantry door with our payment plans listed–motherfucker there is just nothing fucking left which is why you all have to buy my book I have yet to write…there are 8-10 other bills I have aside of the rent and benefits shit and it’s really depressing–but the one thing I have going for me–I was basically sterilized from having children with this fun little party time illess–not that I cannot not get pregnant, but Don has had a vasectomy and really…no I am too old and it is too late so we cannot ruin anyone else’s life with my presentation of poverty and an early death.

Oh okay, so back to the fucking point at hand. Thanksgiving–one call. One text from the piggy. We went to Village Inn to grab our pies, got drunk on Bloody Marys and came home mildly wasted and did the Turkey Friday. That’s how whatever I am about all this garbage… Two or three hellos on Facebook but it was a day I was thankful not to work. And after perusing on that dissection board and hearing all those 3% survival repetitions…you know I heard that for years but it seemed so fucking ludicrous to repeat to people after the first few years that I forgot it and just rounded it up to less than 20–and after seeing the repetition in terms always for catastrophic but, shit more common than you think–I realize I forgot a few things to be thankful for–a few things I neglected to remember in all of my bitching about the result…the process had some lessons in it I seem to have erased for a few years.

It’s okay–the result is this inner nagging in my brain now to get the shit done. The shit I do before I die stuff that needs getting done….if nothing else but to calm the paranoia that results from things like that awful strokey headache wandering around in the deja-vu dark bullshit that is coming to kill me one die, I mean day.