I can say, without a doubt, that this has been the worst Thanksgiving of my life.
Now don’t get me wrong. Turkey Day 2009 was hardly my first Thanksgiving that didn’t resemble a Norman Rockwell painting. When I was in high school, we spent one festival of gluttony in Mexico as my cousin was getting married; for the rehearsal dinner, we had turkey tacos. Another Thanksgiving was spent in Montreal where my mother witnessed for the first time the full visceral horror of my step-brother’s eating binges. Then once as a child, my elderly jewish grandparents didn’t feel like having turkey for dinner so we had duck instead.
But this time things were different. No family. No turkey. No abundance of dirt cheap champagne. I didn’t even get to spend time with any friends.
Ok, well that last part is only half true, in that I saw a “friend”. The reason for these obnoxious quotation marks is such: this is a person with whom I initially established simply friendly relations, then somehow over the course of the last few months – and to my dismay – I’ve become his best friend and lifeline to sanity.
Now that last bit may sound a bit narcissistic on my part, but there have been signs that my conclusion is sound. For one, he often says that I’m the only person who actually understands his ideas. He’s even called me his translator at times. Second, I was the first person he called a few weeks back after a particularly scary hospital visit. Third, having a certain amount of expertise in the area (extensive personal therapy, family suicide, etc.) I can safely say that he’s displaying all of the signs of a person haunted with suicidal thoughts.
Today, he visited me for a few hours. Since he was doing me a favor anyway (delivering a tiny amount of drugs to me), I made him some french toast.
By the way, I have finally perfected the recipe. For those who want to know, it involves eggs, milk, honey, vanilla extract, and cinnamon.
The point is, I had work to do, and so I couldn’t hang out with him all day. So I kept encouraging him to see if anyone else was available, and of course he had little success. Then, all of a sudden, he left, with tears beading in his eyes. What bugs me, though, is that the tears came from an easily avoidable place. The problem is thus: while he may see me as the only person who actually listens to him, he has yet to listen to me or any voice of reason.
Yet sadly enough, he is probably the closest thing I have to family out here. Yes, the best facsimile of home that I can create involves the regular babysitting of an emotional succubus.
Happy Thanksgiving indeed.
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