Ramblings

 Last night was another bad night. I was barely functional when I woke up this morning. I stumbled around trying to do things for a few hours and then I took a nap. Now I sit here feeling a profound sense of ennui and questioning the point to existence. To say the least, the nap wasn't very helpful. I'm trying to find some spark of the 'holiday' spirit or something that could be mistaken for it by the unaware. I've got nothing. 

I hate the christmas music. I hate christmas. I hate the forced cheerfulness of this damn time of year. I hate the fact that I have a big ol' stack of trauma memories that pop up between now and the middle of February. I feel guilty for being like this. I feel like there's something wrong with me because of my loathing of this season. 

Maybe it's because during the holidays, money was tighter than usual and my parents were more prone to lash out due to it. Maybe it's because during the holidays, I was always hoping for that 'holiday miracle' which turned a dysfunctional family into a 'normal' family for at least one day. It doesn't work that way, Hallmark lies. Maybe it's because when I was brought to see Santa (which happened once), I asked that my family be nice to each other for christmas. I'm pretty sure that was the reason why we went only once, because it raised some eyebrows. 

Maybe it's because during the holidays, my brothers and I watched my mom prepare tons of food for other people but we got berated for being greedy when we asked for some, mind you there wasn't much to go around for a while but mom did her army of cookies for the rest of the family instead of baking bread or something for our own household when we were short on food. I asked her why she did it and she answered that it was because we didn't have the money to give gifts to people outside of our household so we HAD to make the cookies. If she decided that we were particularly well behaved as she was cooking up those heaps of cookies, we were allowed a few.

It was torture to see her making all that food for everybody else and we were waiting on a food basket from one of the local churches, trying to stretch the remains of the last one out a little farther. It's a wonder that I can still eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Oh, wait, because of the diabetes, its just peanut butter now. Home canned tomatoes, rice, and ground beef was a regular dinner during the lean times. I hated it. I will never eat it again if I can avoid it. But, this time of year, the memory of it is so strong I can nearly taste it at times.

I have so many bad memories attached to this time of year. I try to put them out of mind and act like they didn't happen. I try to build new ones. But the old ones echo and haunt me. This business of being sick or super stressed out or whatever it is that's got my blood sugar bouncing around is only making the situation worse. I get hungry and I want to eat but I can't because I don't want my blood sugar to spike. I drink copious amounts of water and coffee in an effort to pad my stomach and sooth away some of these feelings (because coffee is one of my few comfort foods that I can still have).

I feel like I would kill someone to be able to sit down and have a bite of Grandma's apple crisp. I have the recipe. I have all the ingredients. But I wouldn't be able to eat it because of my diabetes. things like this seem to be the theme right now. Add to that the fact that I randomly get seized with terror that my parents are going to show up on my door step and drag me back to the farm to be a serf (because there's no other way to describe that dynamic) or I find myself on the verge of tears for no apparent reason ... I'm not doing well right now.