Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve has always been a very special time in my life. For the majority of my youth, it was just me and my mother. My father moved out when I was just five and even though my mother remarried, for all intents and purposes, it was just the two of us. During a particularly rough time when I was young, I wanted to do something special for my mother for Christmas. I didn’t have but a few dollars and nobody to take me shopping, so I decided to cook dinner on Christmas Eve. My cooking knowledge was limited and we didn’t have a lot around the house so I treated my mother to the most elaborate spaghetti and meatball dinner that a seven year old could put together. At the time, I didn’t really understand the pressure that she was under, but I could tell that my efforts had meant the world to her and with that, a family tradition was born.

Throughout all of my struggles, missteps, and issues in my young life, I’ve always kept this tradition alive. If my mom and I are together Christmas Eve, we’ll enjoy our Italian delight, but if we’re apart, no matter what I’m doing, I make time to have a salad, spaghetti, and meatballs on Christmas Eve. A few nights ago, I had the pleasure of sharing my December 24th tradition with my new family, “rock star” and “princess.” We have had the most hectic time since the beginning of October and the few days leading up to Christmas were really passively guided chaos, but for dinner on Christmas Eve, I drove to Fazoli’s, picked up a family order of spaghetti and meatballs, and we sat and enjoyed my traditional meal.

You see, December 24th was the one year anniversary of the “first day of the rest of my life,” as it were. It was on the 23rd that I came to the realization that I had to make some changes in my life. On the morning of the 24th, I weighed myself, for the first time in 7 years and was shocked to find out that I weighed in at 507 pounds! It was such a shock, because I had been too depressed to even look at myself in the mirror for the last five years, so I really had no clue what I looked like or how fat I really was. After that moment of truth, I’ll admit that not even trying was my favorite option by far. I was in such pain and I knew that I was getting closer and closer to the end. Why not just ride this misery train to its last stop and give up? In a very overdramatic fashion, I wasn’t, couldn’t really, give up and I decided that I was going to live my life the way I always wanted. I had known my calling in life from a very early age, but I always lacked the backbone and initiative to tell the people close to me what I wanted out of MY LIFE. I announced to the world, even though nobody was around, that on this day, December 24, 2007, that I was taking ownership of my life and that rolling around on the bottom of the barrel was officially over. It was time to put on my “big-boy pants” and make the necessary changes in my life.

So, one year later, I’m 172 pounds lighter and having the time of my life. Even though that is a milestone, it still isn’t what makes the 24th so special. Because of the way I grew up, it’s always been clear to me that I would never leave my family like my father did. As the years after high school have passed and my mom has moved to Florida, I’ve had the opportunity to get to know my father a lot better and we actually have a pretty solid relationship. He has helped me through some very tough times and I owe him a great deal. I’d even come to the point where I’d forgiven him for leaving and justifying it by saying that understanding yourself is hard work and he just hadn’t had the opportunity to figure himself out in time to save our family.

With that idea fresh in my mind, I ventured into this relationship (with “rock star”) where I got the opportunity to see “how the sausage was made” and I was shocked to say the least. She is in the process of getting divorced. It is such an ugly situation where a mother is pit against the man she loves in an attempt to provide for her child. What a nightmare and absolutely unfair/inappropriate situation. My girlfriend’s ability to persevere through this situation while encouraging her child to have a happy, healthy, fun, and loving relationship with the man who walked out on them is a trait that I admire so much. Through all of that, plus all of the other struggles in her life, my girlfriend is still one of the nicest people I’ve ever know and she still sees the best in others even though she has a plethora of reasons not to.

Finally, watching this divorce unfold has reinforced such an appreciation that I have for my mother. Even though I cooked on Christmas Eve, she managed to put food on the table for the remaining 364 and a half days of the year. Even to this day, through all of the evil she has seen in her lifetime, she continues to touch peoples’ lives and show them the potential that they have within themselves. She is an administrator at a nursing home in Florida, but the word administrator doesn’t do her efforts justice. Her employees would probably refer to her as a “staff mother” before a boss. On many occasions, I’ve seen her talking to people making minimum wage emptying bed pans and encouraging them to get their G.E.D. and helping them find options to pay for it. She treats everybody equally and possibly better than she treats herself.

Even though December 24th now marks a date of personal accomplishment in my life, my traditional dinner will always be an honor to the women in my life have persevered over so much and still held true to their belief that good really does win over evil. These “superheroes” are champions of the human spirit and a great example of how not to sacrifice your principles no matter what the circumstances. These women have earned my admiration and respect 1,000 times over and I feel that a spaghetti dinner on Christmas Eve is the least I can do to show them how amazing they really are. Hopefully, and maybe with a little help from this essay, they can see themselves in the light that they deserve.

I consider myself fortunate to have one woman like this in my life. I have no excuse to be anything less with two in my life. They are the single greatest motivator in my life and I celebrate this tradition in their honor. Every day that I venture to live like my queen and my mother puts me one day closer to godliness (whatever religion or creed you subscribe). The world would be a better place with more people like these two; my life sure is.

"Objects in the rear view mirror may appear closer than they are..."

My life has been plagued with bad relationships. Until recently, I lacked the confidence to demand that I be treated properly so it allowed women to walk all over me. I never thought I was good enough for the relationships that I was in and they used it to their advantage.

The other day, my girlfriend and I were eating dinner and she asked me how much of my thinking and behavior is affected by previous relationships. I struggled to come up with the first one, but since then I realize that I'm a fucking mess with all sorts of baggage clogging my way of thinking. It amazes me that I expect the worst from an absolutely incredible woman because every other woman I dated treated me like garbage. I'm a smart, level-headed man, but when it comes to relationships I'm neurotic bordering on insanity.

I've been conditioned to expect my partner to do and think the exact opposite of what I think and feel and when I find a woman that I match up with so well, I'm nervous that it's just some elaborate ruse. I know in my mind the truth about her, but these ne-jerk reactions are a tremendous inconvenience and could potentially ruin a really healthy relationship. It's been so long that I can hardly see their faces anymore, but the affects of those bad relationships still remain.

Meat Loaf once wrote, "I hear that ugly, coarse, and battered voice and he's right behind me now and he's gaining ground.... But it was long ago and it was far away, oh god, it seems so very far; and if life is just a highway, then the soul is just a car...."

I was scared to make improvements in my life because I knew that the daemons from my past would haunt me wherever I ventured and that they would cause me to fall further the higher I got in life. Because it isn't where you end up that is painful; it's how far you fall. That's the problem with life. "Objects in the rear view mirror appear closer than they are." If I'm not careful, I'll be so focused on the pain in the rear-view and I'll crash into something catastrophic. Every day is new. Every day is different. Addicts in recovery say that "today is the first day of the rest of my life." I need to pay better attention to those words.

My past sucks, but today was one of the best days of my life. Nothing really special happened except I worked on improving my life, I woke up and will go to sleep next to the woman of my dreams, and I got to cook for my family. I've spent my whole life looking backwards and missed the joy right in front of my face. Life will be so much different without starring at that rear-view mirror. I think I'll figure it out though. Besides, most cars in Indiana don't have rear-view windows anyway..... ;)