Several times over the past few months I've missed having an anonymous blog, as my old one (mostly) was. Even after I started telling people about it, I didn't tell anyone who lives around here. So there was a range of topics I could discuss in my old blog that now I can't, now that I've "owned" the new one, and announced it on FB, and otherwise let people know.
Something happened over the holidays that I want/need to write out, and since it involves our neighbors who occasionally read my new blog, I can't post it there. So I'm stashing it here, even though it has nothing to do with genre fiction, or books at all.
We've had brunch on Christmas day for our neighbors and dear friends for years--at least a dozen years. Around eleven a.m., they would troop over with the kids still in their jammies, and we would have brunch and exchange gifts. It used to be one of my favorite Christmas traditions.
But our kids are growing up, and we moved about half a mile away, and I've been aware for several years now that the whole thing wasn't working as well as it used to. My response to that was to try harder. If I do it more perfectly, if I get everything just right and buy everyone a good present, they will still want to come. I really love these people and their kids, and I really wanted to keep it up. Also I'm a sucker for traditions. I would have happily kept doing it forever.
Just like if you keep hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, it will make you smarter, right? Because I'm brilliant like that.
So this year, they kept coming up with excuses for why it wasn't going to work, and I kept getting around them. Until finally it became clear that they didn't want to do it. I got the last of several text messages from my friend while I was in Costco on the morning of Christmas Eve. I was heart-broken. I had to pull into a side aisle and compose myself to keep from totally breaking down. I finished my shopping, made it out to the car and sat there and sobbed for about five minutes.
I was/am so hurt, far out of proportion to the offense. Part of it is feeling a little bit humiliated, like if I'd been a good enough hostess/cook or a good enough friend, they would have wanted to keep doing it. Part of it is that I will genuinely miss doing it. Part of it is that feeling of loyalty to our friendship and a long-standing tradition. Part of it is feeling rejected. I can't help but wonder if maybe they just don't want to be friends with us at all anymore.
Whatever. I'm really hurt. I've been sidelined by waves of sadness ever since. But on the other hand, we had a great day. It was the most relaxing Christmas we've had in years, because we didn't have to jump up after opening our presents to get things cleaned up and start cooking brunch. We had a great time with just our own family, which gets more and more rare as the kids get older. It was, to be entirely honest, a vast improvement over the increasingly tense situation of the past few years, when I knew at some level that they didn't want to do it anymore, but I kept trying anyway.
See, this is why it's so valuable for me to do this. Because as I'm typing this, I'm realizing how silly it is to be hurt about this. There's no way we were going to be able to keep doing it forever. I should have been making it easy for them to decide they didn't want to come, rather than endlessly coming up with reasons why it would still work, when it obviously wasn't working anymore.
I've been so attached to the whole situation that I think I'm actually going through a grieving process of a sort. I'll talk myself through it, realize that this is all for the best, it was time for a change, I should be grateful that it went so well, etc. But then an hour later, I'll get nailed by another wave of grief and hurt and even a little anger and have to do it all over again. I'm sure once we get past the holidays, it will be better. But at the moment, things are a little rough.
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