Thanksgiving? Meh.

Holidays.

Meh.  Humbug.  Something like that.  No.  Really.

Holidays. Family. Friends. Friendship. Kindness. Honesty. Memory. Truth. Hope. Caring.

Like entering a dark room and banging your shin against hard wood.  I stumble over these words quite a bit.  I mentioned in the first post that you'll get a lot of words from me.  Thanksgiving's a day when I have a bit more time on my hands than most people, so you'll probably get even more than you normally would.

My family was never that into holidays in general.  My family wasn't that into family.  My memories of Thanksgiving as a kid were just about as screwy as every other day of the year.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving memories came when I was seventeen or so.  Mrs. Small, my brother's old homeroom teacher and my bio teacher, invited me to share dinner with her and her daughter, Laura.  We sat and ate and rocked it to Neil Diamond as we did the dishes. Which sounds about right.  Good memories with someone else's family. 

My family?  Not so much.  My parents would often use the holidays to piss each other off.  My mother would tell my brother and I that we were having dinner at my aunt's house at 1 pm.  So we'd go to my father's at 10 in the morning, not eat a thing, and then head over to my mother's side of the family.  And be told that we weren't eating until 6 and weren't allowed to have anything until dinner.

When my parents were together, it really wasn't much better.  I remember being ten or so and the dinner at our house.  Mom, dad, my brother.  Me.  Dad's dad.  And his second wife.  Pretty much every adult in the place was shitfaced.  About midway through the meal, Grandpop's wife took a nap.  At the table.  Head down.  Drooling.  I think she may have face-planted in her plate, though that may be an embellishment, a nice little flourish thrown on at the end.  I don't completely recall.

I do recall that we spent another half hour sitting around that table and acting as if nothing out of the ordinary were happening at all.  In a certain sense, there wasn't really anything out of the ordinary about what was happening at all.  You could use that as a metaphor for my childhood, but for the fact that metaphors are supposed to be about substituting one thing for another.  That was my childhood.

Most NT behavior strikes me as not much different.  An acquaintance on FB recently posted this video...

That bit that starts at about 3 minutes in is hilarious.  It also strikes me as almost paradigmatically NT behavior.  Because -

"All of a sudden shit gets real and you're like, blinders up. I didn't see shit. No. That's not my puppet. I don't know that puppet."

That woman passed out in the mashed potatoes?  What woman?  Not my puppet.  I don't know that puppet.

I repeat myself.  I often do.  I've mentioned on numerous occasions that I think that James Baldwin's "Sonny's Blues" is quite possibly my favorite short story ever.  There's an absolutely brilliant passage at the beginning of the piece.

I couldn't believe it: but what I mean by that is that I couldn't find any room for it anywhere inside me. I had kept it outside me for a long time. I hadn't wanted to know. I had had suspicions, but I didn't name them, I kept putting them away. I told myself that Sonny was wild, but he wasn't crazy. And he'd always been a good boy, he hadn't ever turned hard or evil or disrespectful, the way kids can, so quick, so quick, especially in Harlem. I didn't want to believe that I'd ever see my brother going down, coming to nothing, all that light in his face gone out, in the condition I'd already seen so many others...

I kept it outside of me for a long time.  I hadn't wanted to know.   I didn't want to believe.  That's not my puppet.  I don't know that puppet.  I've been that puppet.

When I was 24, my father died.  His liver finally gave out.  My family did what my family did.  And I turned to my friends.  Only to find that quite a few of them weren't there at all.  (Eric Geyer is strongly exempted from this statement.)

I was told that I was a downer.  I couldn't expect people to want to have to think about such things.  People didn't want to have to think about what it would be like to have someone in their family die.  Admittedly, it was rather inconsiderate of me to have my father die.  I promise I won't let it happen again.  But it was "blinders up" and Jesse out.  The woman that I'd been trying to date (or be friends with) for six months prior to that told me never to call her again three weeks after my father died and two weeks after she told me that I should call her if I needed to talk.  I guess she hadn't wanted to know.  She'd been lying to me, she said, because she hadn't wanted to seem like a bitch.

One girl I knew literally crossed the street the first time she saw me coming.  I guess she wanted to keep it outside of her.

One guy I knew took it upon himself to end our friendship after a couple of conversations we'd had.  I had told him that my younger brother, Ryan, had been suspended from school after cursing at a teacher.  He told me that he thought anger was an absurd response to a death.  I didn't quite agree.  Still don't.  Oddly enough, he ended the friendship after I told him that we could talk about it after he'd gone through it.  Talk to me after you bury your father, I said.  Sam was Arabic.  I was told that in his culture, even speaking of such things was tantamount to wishing them upon him.  Sam seemed to think anger a justified response in that situation.  I guess he hadn't wanted to believe that it could happen.  Not his puppet, not his father, I guess.

Many of you know that I asked Jessica Joyner out a ways back.  And a lot of you have asked me why I'm still even talking about that.  As noted before, my mind doesn't really process information in the same way most of yours does.  I'm not sure I can express what it meant to me to ask her out.  Or how hard that was.  The first time I'd asked her out, she had asked me in what sense I wanted to go out.  I told her that I'd be up for hanging out in any sense she wanted to.  And I meant that.  I'd have been as up for a cup of coffee and conversation as anything.  She told me that she was already seeing someone, so I let it go at that.

One thing that puts me in an entirely different place than a lot of you.  I don't have much in the way of family.  My brother died when I was 16.  Father when I was 24.   Haven't spoken to my mother in about a decade.  And that's a longer story than I think I want to enter with this post.  But for the most part, I don't have a family.  I've got friends or I have nothing.  My friendship isn't something that I offer lightly.  My friendships are about all I have to sustain me.

When I'd heard that Jessica had broken up with her boyfriend, I waited a few months and asked again.  It's funny.  I looked at her and wanted to be a better person than I am.  Looked at her and thought that there would even be a point in trying.  Thought that with what kindness she had shown me in the past, there might be someone who would be willing to give me a chance/hand at doing that.  I hadn't realised that what I thought was kindness was really only politeness.  There's a reason I'd asked her to be direct when I asked her out the second time.  I wouldn't be able to understand her otherwise, I said.

She explained to me that she had just broken up with her boyfriend the previous week and wasn't really up for seeing anyone at the time.  Told me that I just needed to give myself a chance.  Said people might surprise me.  I had thought that that was what I'd been asking for.  A chance to try to surprise someone.  So much for chances. She said that she hoped we could still be friends.  And I, being me, didn't realise that that wasn't kindness, but politeness.  As I've noted before, my friendships are about all I have to go on.  Words and friendships.  She offered me hope.  She offered me friendship.  I didn't realise that she wasn't offering anything at all.  I didn't realise that what I was being shown wasn't caring, but pity.  And pity was not what I'd asked for at all.

I'd say that you could take that as a metaphor for a lot of what's happening in my life, but you know, a metaphor is about substituting one thing for another.

Hope isn't something that comes easily to me.  It's not something I often allow myself to feel, as it very often turns to out to be false.

I think that one of the ways that I tend to see things differently than most.  My "now" is pretty long.  Having an excellent memory can be as much a hindrance as a help.  I can remember a conversation from 10 years ago with startling accuracy.  But in a lot of ways, I carry things forward in ways that NT people don't.  Or maybe we all carry things forward.  It seems to me that we do.  Our lives are shaped by the interactions we have with other people.  We carry those forward.

We all continue the story.  Shape the narrative.  Carry on the conversation.  Some more than others.  I happen to carry it more heavily than the typical person.   Given the nature of my mind, I'm not sure how well I'm heard.  Or if what I'm hearing means what I think it means.  Regardless, I'd like to thank any of you who take the time to listen.  Baldwin tells us that there's no way not to suffer.  So much hatred, anger and love...  But Baldwin also tells us that we can find redemption.  We can offer redemption.  We do it by listening.  You can try to keep it outside of you (not my puppet) or you can find a way to listen.  If you're out there, thanks for listening.

Thanksgiving?

I'm thankful to Jessicca Clarke Schaeffer for reading what was an email that matched this post in length and taking the time to respond.  I'd also like to thank you for working at that soup kitchen.  I spent quite a bit of time eating in them when I was younger.  I'm not sure you know what it means to be on the other side of the counter.  Or how much it means to someone like me that people like you are willing to take the time to do that.

I'm thankful to my cousin, Jessica, for everything you've done over the past three years.  My mother might be too busy paying her mortgages to offer me support or help.  You were too busy with your mortgage, yet still found the time to offer help.

I'm thankful to Mike Jones, Krystle Mikolajczyk, James Caldera and Candice Lowell-Caldera for allowing me into your lives.  I look at the four of you and the relationships you have and hope for something similar myself one day.

Thank you to Ray McElroy, Nancy Sirvent, Kat Warren and Jean Heinsohn for all of the support over the past few years.  Support is often something that seems in short supply.

I would thank Kim Pennington, but she'll probably just let it go to her head.

Thanks to Mark Potter for offering a sane alternative to the OC.  Thanks to JJ and Chad and Alex for thinking of me when the game's about to start.

I will thank Munki, Armand and  Patti for keeping it real.  I know when I talk to you, odds are that what I'm told is exactly what is.  Even if it isn't always pretty.

To all of the LT, Readerville, BookBalloon and FaceBook peeps that listen to my ramblings.

Thanks to Eric Pierce for all of the help over the past six months.  To Yolanda Bishop for inviting me into your home.  To Kate Maloy for being the adopted mother I never had.  To Cody James for being as straight up compassionate as anyone I know.  To George and Kelly Alderman, Eric and Paula, for offering me a helping hand when I needed it.  To Debi Carey Harbuck for all of the comfort offered through the years.  To Thomas Howell and Larissa Humphrey, Jesse Depoy and Christina Castillo, Brennan Mulligan and Drew Meschter and Darren Clossin and Dallas Perez for taking the time to check in every now and again.  It always helps to know that someone is thinking of me. 

In short, I'd like to thank just about anyone that's taken the time to lend an ear or a hand or read a post.  Or who take the time to let me into your lives.  Who've offered friendship or kindness.

You give me hope.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.