A Christmas Story
No, not the one with the racist depictions of Chinese people. A more modern tale….
“And if somehow Santa
Got lost on his way
I would try to find a way to smile
Smile on Christmas day, oh”
-Whitney Houston “One Wish”
Here’s our tree, presents under it on Christmas Eve.
This is a rare sight for the tree to be so full as the last time I had a full tree like this, it was on Long Island with my godmother and her daughter. It was three months before her passing.
That was the year I got a Dreamcast, Pokémon Gold & Silver, Pocket Pikachu 2, the strategy guide, and some Dreamcast games. I was in residential on a holiday pass to her house. Usually, passes were for a few days, but because of her condition, I was there two weeks.
That was the last time I truly experienced Christmas. Twenty one Christmases came and went. Most times, I didn’t even have a tree, let alone presents. I’m thirty six and out of those years, maybe twenty five or six of them were spent in a basement somewhere.
Whether it was at my step grandparents, watching all of their natural kids (i.e. not me) get gifts while I just melted away watching TV, them not wanting me there. Whether it was taking care of my Pops, sleeping on a basement couch for twelve years with neither my aunt nor him wanting to celebrate Christmas save for a dinner.
Either way you put it, Christmas wasn’t the best holiday for me. In fact, Christmas has truly been the worst day of the year for me. So many bad memories, so much loneliness where I didn’t even have a family, much less gifts.
I can count on one hand how many Christmases I have had that were truly magical, this one included. Let me take you on the full tour of those few happy times.
1990
In 1990, I was four years old. A huge wrestling fan, still am. A love and hate passed down from my grandmother who used to have the wrestlers over the house and shoot promo photos (the 8x10s used for autographs).
It was the first one I remember and in that year, the WWF Hasbros came out. I already had two of them. Big Boss Man and the Ultimate Warrior I got at Bradlees.
The WWF had this big “warehouse sale” in Connecticut in the Fall of that year. Unbeknownst to me, my godmother went and with help from my invalid grandmother who was bedridden at this point due to her kidneys failing, scored me not only the ENTIRE series 1 of figures I was missing, but also the ring, bedding, foam title belts, and a couple Wrestling Buddies.
I was in heaven and as a four year old, I could’ve never have dreamed of such a haul. But it happened. I must’ve played with those figures and that ring for what seemed like every hour I was awake that holiday season. I had storylines, I used the tops of my crayon chairs as the interview stage.
It’s bittersweet to look upon this, knowing that it’s the only Christmas I remember my grandmother being alive for. She would be alive the following Christmas as well, but I have no memory of it. She would pass the following year in 1992, which is where we’re going to next.
1992
For this year, it’s a very different time. My grandmother had passed the previous June. That’s a story I’ll get into in the near future. But while I don’t remember much about the holiday save for getting some bath stuff and Crash Dummies toys, I DO remember one major thing.
Apparently, before my Nana died, she purchased me a television set. You heard right, folks. As a six year old, I got a TV for Christmas. It wasn’t no cheap one neither. It was a Sony Trinitron with remote. A 14” one with AV inputs in the back too! I still have a picture somewhere of my stepdad holding it up with me, a big smile on his face, as my godmom snapped the picture.
Where was my mother you ask? Why she was pissed off bitching at my aunt of course! She claimed that it wasn’t an appropriate gift for a six-year-old. That even in death, I was being spoiled. Pay attention to that last part. It’ll come in handy later.
She was jealous that my grandmother gave me more attention and made up for my mother’s absence in my earlier years. In my mother’s warped mind, my grandmother was using me to get back at her daughter, when in reality, she was more a mom to me than my own mother was.
That television would be a pivotal piece of not only my abuse, but existence. You see, my mother would torture me with that TV. She’d take it away from me at random and use it in her bedroom, she’d put it back in my room when she felt like it, only to take it away again when she felt like it too.
When I DID have it, I’d be kept company with old sitcoms and afternoon cartoons on the independent stations like WPIX, WWOR, and of course PBS. Those shows helped keep me company and kept my morale strong during that long period of abuse.
For my mother, what was meant to be a final farewell from my grandmother, was used to assert dominance and power over not really me so much, but her dead mother.
1994
This one is bittersweet as it was both the worst Christmas of my life and also the best. Leading up to the holiday, I was playing in the attic room as my mother would have me do since she wanted to just sleep all day, in a stupor brought on by the painkillers from her then broken back.
I needed to grab something out of the attic closet for downstairs aunt and saw a bunch of unwrapped Power Rangers toys and Zords. I loved Power Rangers then so I got so excited figuring that this Christmas was going to be truly amazing!
This was in the midst of the abuse getting bad as she was half intoxicated most of the time due to said pain medication. The verbal abuse, the physical abuse from her throwing things at me and my stepfather beating me when his anger with her boiled over. This made it all seem worth it.
Christmas Day came and none of that stuff was under the tree. What was under the tree however was just a single Game Boy game and some clothes. No big deal I figured. We at the time would have a big Christmas in the afternoon at my step grandparents. We would be together there with his family, including his parents, his brother, his sisters, and his nephews.
Getting into the car, I can see all of those presents wrapped that I saw in the closet. I was so excited I could barely think. When it came time to open presents at that house, however, all I got was even more clothes and cologne. Old Spice cologne…..for an EIGHT year old….
Instead, guess who got the Power Ranger stuff? My stepfather’s nephews. Come to find out, my mother and stepfather bought those for his nephews and NOT for me. Remember when I said to remember my mother’s rant from a couple years back? Well apparently, spoiled only applied to me. It did NOT apply to members of her husband’s family.
I was heartbroken. I was sad. I was livid. They tried to play it off like Santa brought them the toys. I knew better. I hated to do it, but I couldn’t take it anymore. I made a stand. I revealed the entire thing. I told them that while Santa was real, Santa didn’t give them those gifts. It was uncle John and aunt Michelle who did.
Boy did I turn things upside down. I figured I was already taking beatings and being abandoned by my family. What’s one more beating? I was banished to the cellar while I heard them trying to smooth things over upstairs. I got probably the worst beating up to that point by my mother. Guess the titanium rod was holding up well at that point. I didn’t even get dinner. I was left alone there. Hungry, no presents, and abandoned.
A few days later, my godmother came to pick me up. My mother, knowing what she had done, tried to make up all sorts of excuses to not let me go. She knew better however and told her that if I didn’t go, she was gonna call the authorities. She has suspicions of the abuse but until now, she didn’t have proof until seeing the bruises from that beating in that cellar.
She sat me down in her kitchen when we got to her house and she demanded to know everything that happened. I never heard her yell at me like that but I knew she wasn’t mad at me. She was furious because she saw I’d been hurt. I told her every single thing that happened. She in that conversation confirmed that part of those things that my stepdad’s nephews got were bought by HER to give to me.
Now, she was one of those “Long Island Lolita” types. The ones with the loud mouth, loud bleached blonde hair, and long nails. She could cuss like a sailor to the point I think I got my mouth from her. However, I don’t think I’ve ever heard her using the F-word as much as she did that day.
She ordered me to go get my coat on, left my cousin with her friend, and took me to Toys R Us. She then told me to get whatever I wanted to get and she’d help me with it. She reigned me in a bit, but when it was all said and done, I had those Power Rangers and Zords, along with a Genesis and Game Gear, with some games for each.
We then went back to my house, but when I went to get out, she told me to stay in the car and don’t unlock the doors unless she came out. She marched into that house and after what seemed like an eternity, came back out with some bags packed.
She threw the bags in, slammed the trunk, and exchanged some more heated words with my mother where it seemed like every other word was one I’d get soap for. I’ll never forget the last words my mother told her: “you want him? TAKE HIM! You think you can do better, bitch?!”
It was at that moment that I stayed with my godmother for a two and a half year period that had its share of ups and downs, but not as much as with my mother. As for my mother, she would be back a couple years later as a supposedly changed woman, the first of a few times over the coming years.
For the moment, I was free.
2000
Flash forward six years later and a lot has happened. Firstly, I foolishly went back in 1997 after my mother and stepfather formally got engaged and was about to be married. Both promised things would be different and my godmother was starting to become busier with her career to the point where her friends took care of me and my cousin more than her.
Of course, it ended how you expected it would. Not only did the abuse get worse, but now with them having their own child, they didn’t want me around anymore. Now I was a “distraction” and “my father’s kid” despite them not saying that last part to my face. I was a blemish in her “perfect family” and she wanted me gone.
Around 1998 and 1999, I started to fight back from her abuse and my mother had me committed on several occasions, claiming that I was unstable and a danger. Each time I was sent back after a couple weeks with the same diagnosis: he isn’t the problem, YOU ARE.
She’d try time and time again, beating me more and more viciously with each passing moment. Each time, sending me to the hospital. Finally, they had enough. The social worker there called DYFS and I didn’t go home for once. I went to a residential group home.
Of course in their visits, my mother and stepfather tried and succeeded in convincing me that I was there because I was bad and that if I wanted to come back, I had to “be good”. When at the time, I more preferred being there as it wasn’t the hellhole it would turn out to be later on. It was a small community of people my age and a little older with counselors who seemed more like older brothers and sisters than anything.
At the same time, my godmother was fighting with her second battle with brain cancer, of which she’d later lose. She had put in paperwork with the state to formally adopt me and that led to a messy court battle between the state, her, and my mother.
She finally was able to come and visit me and take me on passes after a couple months of me being there. When she did, she set me straight. I wasn’t there because I was bad. I was there because the hospital got tired of my mother admitting me for no reason and suspected her abuse. The state had taken me away from my family after investigating the matter and now, I was theirs.
As I mentioned earlier, that Christmas with her and my cousin, I got a whole load of stuff. But more importantly, I had a family for the first time in a few years, with my godmother trying to assure me that despite the battles in the courtroom and in the hospital, everything would be just fine.
It would not be however.
She would pass away just a few months later, a few days before my 15th birthday. It would be the last good Christmas I would have for twenty one years…
Twenty one long and lonely years……
2022
After twenty one Christmas holidays, only six of them having an actual Christmas tree and eight of them not sleeping in a basement, I finally have a good one on tap this year. Not without its battles however.
You see, my grandfather’s sister passed away this year and she was a tad loaded. Not millionaire mind you, but high six figures at least.
She left 15% of her estate to each of her nieces and 10% to her nephews. Now my aunt that I live with, the one who I’ve been putting up with since my Pops died as I have no other place to go, promised me that when she got her share, she’d send me on a vacation.
With me struggling and barely pulling together, I just would rather have the money and told her as such. Vacations are over within days and you have nothing to show for it. Whereas I could use cash and get exactly what I needed and a few things I wanted.
I was expecting 10% of what she got and she agreed in principle. When she found out how much she was getting however, the narrative changed. She got over $50,000 which would’ve given me $5,000.
I know five large isn’t shit to a lot of people but to someone like me who’s on disability and lives paycheck to paycheck, it may as well be a million dollars. It was more than fair considering all the emotional and verbal abuse she’s given me over the years, especially since my Pops died. Add to that all the bills me and him paid for twelve years while she didn’t pay a dime despite having a job.
For the longest time, we would constantly fight over how much I was to get and I even had plans to leave should she fuck me out of that money. I didn’t care about being homeless at that point. If she wasn’t going to do right by me, I was gone.
Another holdup was that the check kept getting delayed, and delayed, and delayed. By early November, we didn’t hear from her cousin for several months. It looked as if he left us high and dry.
After an intense argument which almost came to physical blows when she got right in my face, she finally called her cousin to see where the money was. All of a sudden, he “meant to call us” and that the check would be “in the mail by the end of the week”.
No thank you, no remorse, just silence from her. I made her get the answers and because of me, she was getting a check instead of waiting to see what would happen.
The check came that Saturday. The amount was $52,000. Another argument ensued where she went on a tirade about how I shouldn’t get anything because it was HER MONEY, despite me paying thousands in food and bills for her and not asking for a single thing other than a loan here and there when I was struggling which I also paid but not before she argued with me about it.
Despite ME being the disabled one, I was HER caretaker despite her thousands in the bank, steady job, and social security.
So, after all that, how much did I get?
Two thousand.
Two thousand out of fifty two thousand. She got an even fifty grand and all I got was two thousand.
I was livid. I wanted to leave them and there. But fortunately for me, cooler voices prevailed and showed me that it could be worse and to think of it as a small settlement. You don’t go into court getting exactly what you want, but you get something. That at least I could get my new phone, my PS5 back I sold some time back for the higher priced Steam Deck, and a few other things.
So that’s what I did. I decided to use this small sum and make MYSELF the best Christmas I have had since my godmother was alive.
And as if fate was shining upon me, deals and sales I encountered helped me stretch that money.
This Christmas, I got myself:
-A new iPhone 14 Pro with MagSafe charger and case
-A new iPad 9th Generation with case
-A PS5 God of War Ragnarok disc bundle
-PS5 Pulse headset
-Nintendo Switch Online controllers
-Evercade EXP with games
-New wireless headphones
It was a fight and while I doubt I’ll ever have another Christmas like this one (I HOPE so though), at least for once I can make myself the Christmas I was denied for so long, either due to family or finance problems. That in itself is a win for me.
With this out of the way, the fighting between me and my aunt as well as her mouth seems to have stopped. For how long I have no idea. I hope now that she got this money, she’ll be a more pleasant person. But who knows what the future holds there.
What I DO know however is that as I’m writing this, Christmas Eve has turned into Christmas morning. The savior has come. The church bells are ringing. For me, I’m dead tired. But satisfied.
Despite it being the coldest Christmas ever that I can remember, I feel warm. Warm not only under two thick blankets with TBS’ yearly “Christmas Story” marathon in the background that’s kept me company for so many of those lonely Christmas days, but also warm in my heart.
For once, I was able to make myself something magical and wonderful. Free of bullshit. Free of heartbreak. I’m still dealing with the pain of not having a family. I’m still dealing with the painful memories of Christmases past. But at least for one year….one year….I know what lays at the end and can look forward to it.
Tonight I head to sleep after posting this, knowing in a few hours I’ll be unwrapping everything I picked up in front of a woman who tried to fight me every step of the way almost as much as her sister did. I will relish in it. It’s the perfect revenge for the past eighteen years of being here.
For the first time in my life, I feel hopeful of the future. After what’s been the most trying year of my life, I’ll have the best Christmas in two decades.
Here’s to hoping that next year starts a new journey which will finally give me everything that I have always desired, wanted, and deserved. I feel a long journey coming to an end and a new one on the horizon. Time will tell how right I am.
May I meet all the people in destined to meet. Those who everyone says is waiting for me and will love and cherish me as I should be. When I meet those people, I only hope that I can love and cherish them the same as they do me.
I wish this for myself, one who’s struggled for thirty years of her life ever since that Christmas thirty long years ago.
May this year be the last time I live in pain, suffering, and loneliness. May I experience nothing but love and support from now on. May everyone who’s feeling the same and struggled with the same experience it too.
I wish everything best of us in this next year and if your Christmas is bad this year, especially with this Arctic Blast stranding everyone and keeping families apart, I wish this be the last one that is bad for you and for nothing but good ones from here on out.
I’ll see you all next year.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Holidays, to everyone and to all a good night!
P.S. Before anyone asks, I DID see A Christmas Story Christmas. I absolutely loved it! They made it more realistic and in doing so made it even more heartwarming. I actually cried at the end when they get their presents.