Thanksgiving

I’m on a crowded flight to London.  I left from Dallas.  It’s amazing how misbehaved children can be, and how this humiliates parents but gets no result.  It’s amazing how cranky I am when I haven’t had a cigarette in 10 hours.

I took the same flight last year, and it was delightful.  I had the two seats next to me open, so I had room to spread out, and I was actually able to sleep.  Still though, in spite of all that, I’m feeling thankful, on this day of Thanksgiving, that I can get there to see my sweet family in just a few short hours.  I can hear Sawan’s voice asking me, “And then did you fly?  Through the AIR?” There was no more complaining after the youtube video that we saw with Rick that day, and it’s made me a better flyer and honestly, a better person ever since.

Somehow, like an idiot. I managed to get on this flight with no Kleenex, and I’ve been a wreck the whole time.  It’s actually one of those really bumpy ones that jiggles and jiggles and makes your tummy hurt weather you have anxiety about flying or not.

I just chose to hop myself up on anti-anxiety meds and red wine.  Maybe I’ll actually be able to sleep after all that, who knows?

I’ve had to stay off of facebook all day. I can’t take the sweet cute things that people say about their family and their husbands.  That was my life, too, once.  I loved Thanksgiving.  It was my favorite.  I loved that it was a holiday just about being together.  It was a holiday about yummy things to eat.  It was a holiday somewhat untouched by the grossness of the consumerism that has permeated other holidays, and just focused on families and togetherness.  Sawan and I were only together about a month when we spent our first Thanksgiving together.  He came to my friend Ingrid’s house (we were doing kid Thanksgivings that year because my folks were in Jamaica celebrating their 30^th wedding anniversary).  It became an important day to us.  He told me he loved me for the first time that day.  The next year he made plans to take me to look for wedding rings the following day. 

So this plan of mine to “skip it” is in play yet again.  It just didn’t work as well this year.  I fly all day on Thursday, then with the miracle of the time change don’t arrive till Friday morning, effectively “skipping” Thanksgiving.  But last year this helped me to not have to think about it much, where as this year I can’t seem to help it.  I’m just so sad.

I’m not quite sure why this year is so much harder, I think it’s maybe that last year I was still so in shock and this year I’m really feeling things.  I’m a total mess.  I’ve never felt this hopeless throughout this whole ordeal, like I’m just not quite sure how to survive it.  In a lot of ways I feel like I must have gone back to the beginning, because my unplanned mantra has become once again, “how did I get here?”

I just miss him.  I missed getting up with him this morning and drinking too much coffee while we watched the parade, then him starting the stuff that he was responsible for dinner and having me taste everything while I continued to be the princess on the couch, drinking coffee and watching the parade.  Then me coming in to the kitchen to do my one responsibility:  Green Been Casserole, and us making jokes about it. 

I miss us getting everything done and then going over to my folks to be with everybody, I didn’t know that the last one we were all together was the last one.

So, there it is.  I hate it when people tell me that they read my blogs and just cry, but I’ve also promised myself that I would let everyone in at some point to the darkness that I really feel.  This is a pretty dark place.

I will say this.  I have a lot to be thankful for.  I have an amazing family, and being able to come to England to visit some of them is such a privlege.  I was doing so bad before I left that I almost didn’t come, but I have to admit that part of my motivation for coming to Enlgand was to have something more interesting to say on my blog, so I’m super thankful, also, to you, my “readership of tens of you.”  Thank you for caring about what I have to say and helping me to be motivated toward moving on.  Love!