No Happy Holidays

So, people have been asking why I hate this time of year. Seriously, I really do think I have SAD, but besides that, it appears that a lot of the sad events in my life have happened around this time of year. Come to think of it they all happened in consecutive years.

1997: My favorite uncle got shot and was barely hanging on. This was the guy I looked up to the most, the only one I could really talk to in my family and I absolutely adored him. It was so frightening for me to see this strong man whom I'd always seen so vibrant and full of life, hooked up to numerous machines, struggling to take every breath. I worried about him every day. I couldn't focus in school and I stopped getting in trouble for clowning in class. I visited him every other day in the hospital. I read him poetry, held his hand and told him how much I needed him in my life. He struggled for about 3 months and eventually came out of the hospital, but then he was paranoid because his shooter was unidentified and it took him a long time to get back to his normal self.

1998: Jan 2, I get a call from my first boyfriend's mother. She's in tears and it's hard as hell to understand what she's saying, but somehow I gather that my first boyfriend, Tyler and his brother, Jerome, had gotten shot. Tyler was in ICU and Jerome had already been pronounced dead. I couldn't believe it. I just remember dropping the phone and falling to the floor. I don't remember when I got up, I just remember my mom walking in from work and I was still on the floor. I remember her literally carrying me to my bed and just rubbing my back as I cried from deep within my soul. I grew up with these dudes. I knew Jerome before I had ever met Tyler so I took his death especially hard. He had taken me under his wing and treated me like blood. I called him brother and his mother Mama D. He was the one who gave me the name Dia and was an extremely positive male presence in my life. He was the first guy besides my daddy that bought me gifts for no reason. He used to pick me up everyday from school and we'd have some of the best conversations on the way to my house. This wasn't none of that "play brother" mess kids used to like to play. He was my blood. There was nothing preceeding, he was my brother. He'd known me since I pronounced yellow "lellow" and had been there for me all the way through. Now he was gone. He was only 17. Then on top of losing the only brother I had ever known, I had to deal with my puppy love hanging on by a thread. I was a mess. I literally cried for months and wouldn't talk to anybody. It took me so long to even begin to attempt to live a life of normalcy that my mother constantly told me that she was putting me in counseling or some sort of therapy.

1999: I knew that the one year anniversary of Jerome's death would be hard. I even prepared myself for it. I tried to surround myself with good times in the days leading up to it. I thought about him a lot and made sure that I kept good memories in my mind. Finally January 2nd came and - nothing. I didn't shed one tear. That made me feel so bad and I could not figure out why I wasn't sad. I wasn't happy, but I could not find it within myself to be sad. Whoever said the Lord works in mysterious ways knew what they were talking about. He knew there was NO way I could possibly grieve on the anniversary of Jerome's death and make it through what was to come just 8 days later.

January 10, in the middle of the night, I hear my door slowly open. The head of my bed faces my door and as I slowly open my eyes, I see my mother and my father standing in the hall. My mother is holding my father around his shoulders and he looks at me with tears in his eyes and says "she's gone". I immediately start to cry...not my grandma. Not the one who called me her favorite grandchild and meant it. Not the one who would drive 40 minutes just to spare me a butt-whooping and think nothing of it. Not the woman who introduced me to the Lord. Not the woman who made the best soul food dinners you could ever dream of. Not the woman who brought big ass buckets of chitlens up to Cleveland and talked to me like I was grown as she cleaned them. Not the one who held my family together. The only one who reminded us in hard times that we were indeed family and told us to love each other regardless. Not the lady who would pinch the shit outta you if she even thought you did something wrong. Not the woman who would call you over in a voice as sweet as pie and then proceed to hit you with her cane because of something you did over 20 minutes ago. Not her. I couldn't take it. I got excused from school work for two weeks and went back to my state of depression. With my uncle still showing side effects from getting shot and my brother gone, I had lost the only person left in my family that I felt I could truly confide in. It became apparent that the holidays were not meant to be jolly for me.

So, as you can see, the holidays have not been a particulary happy time of year for me. They have improved in recent years, but there still seems to always be some major problem that arises. I thank the Lord that I haven't had to deal with anymore death, but this time of year still brings a sense of impending doom for me. So there you have it, that is why I am consistently unhappy this time of year. Hopefully this year will be different.