This is the time of year when everyone begins to ask you what you're doing for the holidays. If you don't come up with a great answer, or what they feel is exciting enough, then they suddenly begin to outwardly appear to feel sorry for you. I'm sure there are some people who genuinely feel sorry, but most people just think that's what you want to hear from them.

When you ask me what I'm doing for the holidays and I tell you that I'm working, don't say "oh, that's rather unfortunate" or "couldn't you have taken the day off?" I'm working because it's my regularly scheduled day to work. When I tell you that I live alone here and that my family is 1,300 miles away, I'm not expecting you to feel sorry for me. Don't come back at me with "oh no! I'm so sorry to hear that!" or "why don't you go and visit them/they come visit you?" I've even gotten the rare "well, don't you miss your family?" Do you really think that if I could afford to take the time off that I wouldn't be on the next plane out? I'm not a monster. I'm a single, independent female who's trying to make something of herself. Of course I miss them. I'm glad you or your family make enough money to travel during the ridiculously expensive holiday travel window, but I haven't made it there yet.

I made the conscious decision to move away from my family. I didn't have a falling out {not this time} and I wasn't running away. I moved here to create a better life for myself. It's a rather slow moving process, but it's still in progress. I feel at home here; something I haven't felt in a very long time. And when I finally do make it, of course my visits to them will increase, like the once a year I was able to go when I lived in Arizona. Times have changed, circumstances are different, but they will change again and when they do, I'll take full advantage. But for now, I work with what I have.

So you can take your feigned sympathy and your fake concern and shove it. Be happy that I'm not lying in a ditch somewhere begging for food.

I have 4 Thanksgiving dinners this year, and every one of them is with people who have made me a part of their family. Thank you very much.

I guess faked sentiments are usually pretty obnoxious, but they're so sunk into social tradition that they're hard to get rid of.
» randomjunk on 2014-11-18 02:43:46

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