The things that went right

I spent Christmas with part of my family.

Christmas with the family has been so painful for all of us for so long, we've gone through all the stages of grief about it. First, it was denial - we tried to celebrate in spite of the horrors and the losses and the perpetual confrontation of what had happened. We had bargaining. Sorrow and Anger were frequent holiday guests. Suicide attempts and DUIs were the feature events, with visits to the emergency room and police station.

I tried to escape the family Christmas hell years ago: in an excellent Christmas decision, I visited Hans in the Netherlands for the first time over Christmas - and that was when I agreed to be his girlfriend. He cooked dinner for me and took me to see the windmills at Kinderdijk. It was so lovely. Two years ago, I joined Eve's family in Venice over Christmas: in the middle of the crushing depression left in the wake of Sjors' decisions and the loss of Hans. In spite of the suffering, that midnight mass in Murano with Eve remains one of my favorite memories. Last year, I was in Gabon teaching analysis until days before Christmas, and I returned to Pozzuoli completely exhausted. I hadn't escaped the season, though, and I spent the day on the couch, Skyping people and wishing them happy holiday and feeling like shit. I promised myself that I would never make such a pathetic mess of the holiday again. There are many things about the holiday I disapprove of - but you shouldn't spend it alone unless you do it with a bottle of bourbon and a shotgun and bad intentions.

Christmas this year marks a new phase in the family grief: acceptance. We don't try to make it more than it is. We don't try to put meaning on a tragedy that will never have any meaning. Lee is in Rehab; M is pregnant and considering abortion; Jane is divorced; I've lost the potential for a family of my own. I've lost the only two men in the world I've ever deeply loved, I've been slandered and lost my job. But, for god knows what reason, we don't seem to give a collective shit anymore.

There's something to be said for realizing that the happy ending will never occur. It can be a miserable life if you think you were somehow entitled to happiness - that you deserve it. I thought that I would be able to keep the man I loved more than my life. I thought we would have a family together. It was so real, so close to me that I lived it. And now it is gone.

I had no more right to happiness than anyone else. There are people who have it far worse. I didn't deserve what happened to me. But I also didn't deserve happiness. When you look at it that way, we can all sit around and open presents and eat crepes and just be grateful for the things that went right.