Happy Thanksgiving.

This has to be the worst Thanksgiving I have ever been through. It started out fine and everything: I got to sleep in, stay up late last night, work on my homework on my own time, read what I wanted to when I wanted to, ect. But then the time came to get ready for the annual Thanksgiving dinner at my grents' house. I wasn't overly excited about it, because I knew that my grandmother would be in the next room over, not eating, not partying it up like the rest of us, and not participating in anything really, other than a few breaths every now and then. She's been quite sick for awhile, and really just not doing anything. It's been weird for the whole family. Not weird, as in unnatural, but weird as in sort of uncomfortable. No one really wants to see her like this, and I [unashamedly] have been avoiding her for some time. In reality it sounds grotesque of me to do that, because she's never been anything but nice to me, but I don't want to remember her this way. She has also mentally deteriorated, so I'm not even sure if she knows who I am anymore. She talks a lot about my older siblings though, probably because they were her first grandkids. There's no shame in that, and I don't feel left out.

I started to get ready at about 3:00 p.m., because dinner was [supposed to be] at 4:00 p.m. When I started doing my makeup I was listening to music, so at first I thought their voices were in jest. As I went to start my drying hair, I noticed that they were the epitome of jesting voices, and really they were furious. Contention of any sort on a special day is disconcerting, but when it results in a major blow out that you can literally hear from outside our house, it's even more so. Consequently, my dad didn't end up going to his own family's dinner. Me going there felt phony as hell, because my [offended] brother was there as well, yet we all just acted like nothing happened, when really my mom was in tears the entire time. I won't say that this happens every holiday, but more often than naught something similar occurs. And then people ask me why I'm a complete Scrooge about holidays. Of course you can't really share that with people though, can you?

I'm not going to say "I told you so," or intentionally rub it in, but for quite some time it's been obvious to me that 1. anything my family talks about can be groups into three categories [a. guns b.religion or c. politics], and 2. my family shouldn't talk about politics, because we were blessed with easily offended personalities and short tempers, as made obvious by this evening's episodes. Sometimes I just wish people would take me a little more seriously, and realize that just because I'm a stereotypically stupid teenage girl doesn't mean that I don't know what I see and what I'm talking about sometimes.

Happily, my two cousins and I were able to discreetly leave shortly after dinner, to go view Twilight, which was a much better alternative. This time however, the theater was pretty much empty. Not really a surprise there.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is don't think I'm weird because I don't like holidays or family gatherings as much as I should. Don't get me wrong. I love my family. But I also wish we didn't fight as much as we do.