READ AT YOUR OWN RISK
(This deals with Christmas trauma that no one wants to talk about.
# 31………(PART B)….My first letter of the year to sweet Love (you precious mensch)
Dear Love,
Bare with me for a little circumspection. A love letter, for example, that’s meant to convey emotion between two sweethearts. My favorite example is Civil War letters and between soldiers and their sweethearts back home.
How silly is it that we would send a love letter to our wives or girlfriends if we were off to war, but forget about friendship. Human beings are sometimes so insensitive that a relationship not involving sex is meaningless. Everybody that fought in the Civil War didn’t have a wife or girlfriend. Sometimes they might have had a sibling or a friend that felt so close , and now you miss them dearly. Friends love one another and they say so unless they’re a little embarrassed that might be interpreted in a different way then intended. I proposed friendship to you and I’m proud of me for doing that. That’s how important this friendship is to me. More importantly, I wanted “your” friendship in particular. It didn’t take me very long to recognize what prize you are to me. I proposed friendship to you quite frankly because I didn’t want you to get away from me.
I really needed you…………….. I know you are taken romantically by some lucky guy but the beauty of friendship is that you can have lots of friends and you can love each and every one of them . . I don’t know if you even know how happy I am that I thought of getting down on my knee and proposing friendship to you. I needed a friend like you in order to feel……..I want to ask permission to write you “friendship letters”. You might say, but James, that’s what we are doing. Sure, let’s just keep doing that forever ….. Please don’t raise your eyebrows if I start sounding a bit romantic. It’s just who I am and you’re very important to me. Oh my God –There’s a BF ing possum just walking across the front yard in the rain. My mom told a story about her she was a little girl. She said somebody killed a possum and brought home to eat and her mom cooked it and everyone was sitting on the table all ready to go. Somebody said , “does anybody want to eat that.? ? ? “ Everybody said , “ Oh Hell no !!!!!“, and I am thinking maybe the dog got happy..
That little critter is walking real slow. I can rush out there real quick with a blanket and get him. He looks like a big rat. Can you imagine, if you are a cave woman and were hungry. Could you eat him raw while he still alive? — Did you just look discerningly, at the snack you’re holding in your hand ?LOL
It’s 2 o’clock. I got to bed at eight and it was almost 2 when I got out of bed. I wish I didn’t have to sleep at all but I keep it to a minimum. The first thing on my mind this morning was you. I’m listening to Diane Krall. As I draw a nice deep breath and let it out through pursed lips I think of what I’m about to tell you. For 10,000 reasons I feel like my heart is been run through the mill. I’m not complaining love, I’m bragging that I traveled a rough road and I’m still okay.
I used to think Christmas was so wonderful . Then I turned 18 and got married. Every Christmas was so much drama. Screaming, drinking, running away from home like a little child. It was insane. Then I turned 35, and got a divorce and now Christmas is, oh so boring. No cops showing up, no kicking the Christmas tree clear across the room. No screaming at your spouse at the top of your lungs and her screaming at you the same. And all the while nobody’s hearing what the other person is saying at all. BORING !— -I’ve been trying to think of three good things to say about Crystal. I’m doing that Love because you asked me to do that. It’s always a good thing to try to do something positive. You said that in order to be helpful and have me see things in a new light. Crystal and I went together for a while before marriage, so 15 lousy Christmas’. I don’t know why this happens but it does. I’ve had many good Christmases since those days. It’s all I can do to hold all the tears back Genevieve. It doesn’t matter how many great Christmases you’ve had. The painful ones just won’t go away. I’m so sorry I’m so sorry, if you’re having painful Christmases too right now love, that’s just not fair. I would do anything to protect you from that. Not that it matters but Crystal was half Finish and half Blackfoot Indian tribe. I think I was proud of her Indian heritage but that isn’t anything she did. Well I gotta go clean my glasses again. I’m a very emotional boy and my glasses really suffer. Sometimes it takes quite a while to soak all the snotty tears off of my glasses.( There, that bit of info was brought to you by the Little Debbie scone industry)
My Christmases are pretty much — keep a stiff upper lip and don’t try to remember the past. I tell you this love. I hope this story helps you to focus on something outside of yourself that could give you a little emotional relief. Nothing works very well, about removing past trauma, except maybe hearing someone else’s story. That can help relieve the traumatic feeling a little bit.
Let me tell you what somebody who claims to love you, can do. We fought constantly but I loved her so much. I held down 40 hour a week job faithfully. I don’t know much she cheated on me but I think she did more than I knew about . . My second son Devon, I don’t even think he’s my son. Joan assures me that there was an unmistakable resemblance but she might be just being kind. I’ve always handled life in my own way. When Chris broke up for real I couldn’t even stand child visitation. That would mean I would have to see her each week and I could not ever see her again, not after what she did and the love that I still had . I couldn’t take the chance that I would get weak and go back to her again.
She did a fine job of poisoning “my” sons’ minds against me and I did nothing to change that. I always thought it would be better to let them hate me than to tell the truth and have them hate their mother also.. I have no desire to reestablish a connection with my two boys. They are just sad little crumbs of a nightmare past that I can’t ever face again.
I thought it would be better to just let her demonize me in their minds. Of course she told them that the only reason I left the marriage was to get “strange”. That’s what most guys do, after all . . That wasn’t me at all. Crystal and I had such intense sex before we were married. Then she got pregnant and we got married and it looked like we were going to make a go of it until she did NOT believe in sex anymore. I loved her more than myself. But I was a young buck and testosterone is such a powerful drive when you’re 25. She was never there for me. I suffered and begged her for years. I told her I’m not a bad looking guy. I could find somebody to have sex with outside of this marriage but I don’t want to. I love you and I don’t want to cheat on you but the sex drive is driving me insane and you won’t help. But she was such a narcissistic ass hole that,that only complemented her and made her feel more important. The final coup de grace was when she told me at the end of our marriage that she was gay and hiding it all these years. Why can’t people just be honest. Now my kids are grown up. Brett has fetal alcohol syndrome and a life of crime and using drugs. His younger brother has damaged his brain so badly with drugs that there’s no hope for him.
Brett has seen fit to come over to our house and threatened to break in and kill Joan and me. I haven’t even seen him for decades and he still has that kind of hostility inside of him. The last time he dropped by for one of his little visits he ruined our car by pouring Karo syrup in the gas tank. I took it to court and filed a restraining order. The judge gave me a lifelong restraining order against him and Devon. That is extremely rare, but the judge sided with me so much that he had Brett and Devon thrown out of the courtroom for trying to intimidate the judge by throwing gang signs. The dear judge had deputies escort us to our car after court. The judge said to the whole courtroom but mainly to me. “Gee, I can’t understand why you want to get rid of THAT “ .. He’s a career felon so him and his house can be searched any time. He sent his girlfriend over to our house one time to beg us to release the restraining order.. The reason was that the cops paid him a surprise visit to his house and found several guns. Felons are not supposed to have guns. Brett has already threatened us with a gun that he spoke of. Yeah right, release the restraining order because he got in trouble for having guns. I can’t believe I had a part in creating that idiot. We have guns too Love. I got a shotgun under the bed. It’s a short barrel Mossberg with double ought buck shells
In the family room is a 38 pistol loaded and ready to go. I also have a little derringer that shoots 22 long rifles it it’s so tiny that it could be mistaken for pocket change. I am not going to play victim ever again. I’ve had surveillance cameras installed all around the house so we know exactly what’s going on 24 hours a day. We’ve done other things to which I think is probably excessive but, I repeat, I’m not going to be a victim. It’s really nice to feel safe in your own home because you have tons of armament in place. It’s not just him. It’s Crystal’s brother too, who is probably a father to them in their minds. He is pure hard prison criminal that has killed people. I repeat , I am not going to be a victim. It’s easy to forget about it and just relax about it, when nobody can get through your walls. I am a peaceloving man. I just want to try coexistence with peace and a little bit of Jesus. Thanks to all of my security I feel safe every day.
I think these days I just tolerate Christmases. I do the best I can try to recapture the Christmases I had when I was 10 years old. That’s kind of fun. It’s nothing like the Christmases I had when I was 10 but, just for a minute while opening presents, it feels that way. Funny how the capitalistic Christmas disappears immediately after there’s no more money to be made. You would think we could taper off Christmas just a little bit but no, it just stops abruptly. I feel so used and cheap, like I’m a hooker that just got dropped off after. Wham BAM-THANKS MACY’S…….
I have an idea to help desensitize ourselves regarding Christmas trauma. Just what if you and me have this thought in our mind that after Christmas when were taking out Christmas trash, we also unload Christmas trauma by writing to each other about it. I don’t think we should do it during Christmas but after Christmas might be perfect. If you and me have a nice Christmas and we knew that we could take care poisonous memories after Christmas by writing those memories to each other, it might tend to make Christmas more,…………. better . You have precious memories of your son and how wonderful it would be to just appreciate those memories without any outside interference.
You and me, can be back to back, conquering all bad things. I think Christmas is a very sensitive time of year for both of us. I bet together we can either figure out how to enjoy Christmas or scratch it off our list altogether, if that feels better. Maybe the answer is a “modified” Christmas where we would only allow good things in .
“When Joan’s mother died, we canceled Christmas and went to Los Angeles. That was a good thing to do. I think I would cancel Christmas if it were up to me but I don’t want to ruin it for Joan. She still keeps Christmas, but has her own Christmas trauma to deal with and that’s a horrible story of her own .
Do you think it would be a good thing, or a healthy thing to do, if everyone were to deal with their Christmas trauma after Christmas instead of just locking it away with the dusty old Christmas ornaments and not dealing with it ever? I don’t know.
